THE 


STRUGGLE 
-or AMERICA 

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THE 


STRUGGLE FOR AMERICA 


BY 

R. P. BRORUP 


(Copyrighted 1904 by the Author.) 


North and South Publishing Co. 
Fitzgerald, Ga. 


H N <oA- 
•'B <\ 1 > 


fLIBRARY cf CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 


NOV 21 1904 

Copyrient tntry 

&04. Z7, tqcy 

CLASS ^ XXc. Nos 

/ooc xy 

COPY B. 



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CONTENTS. 


<>& 

Page 


Brains and Brute Force.*.. 5 

The Social Question in the United States. 18 

The Fittest to Survive. 32 

Morality and Marriage.. 39 

Revolution and Decay of the Native Bace in the North. 41 

Notes and Review. 55 

The Anglo-Saxon Bace in the South, with References to the 

Condition in the North. 58 

The South and the Negro.. 65 

Immigration. 76 
























BRAINS AND BRUTE FORCE. 


There is an interesting problem involved in the use of the 
brains of the foremost among civilized nations for the multi¬ 
plication of people of a lower type. These people of a lower 
type are often far ahead of their benefactors in bodily strength 
and vigor, in vitality and reproductive power; and will multiply 
as rapidly as the brains of a higher civilization makes it pos¬ 
sible with its improvements and increased means of subsistance. 

Holland has by the brains of her civilization doubled the 
number of adherents to Mohammedanism in the island of Java 
in less than thirty years. England has achieved nearly as 
much for Egypt in a like space of time. The increase of Mo¬ 
hammedans by the activity of the Christian nations in the 
last fifty years is probably not less than fifty millions. 

This doubling of population of various kinds may be con¬ 
ceived of as achievements more splendid in the process than 
the final results. The ability to do it may be a matter of 
boasting, but a far-sighted policy would rather shrink from 
the responsibility, both as a matter of self-preservation, and 
in view of the possible effect on the world’s best interests. 

Would any one be happier to know that the four hundred 
millions in China should double their number in a given num¬ 
ber of years ? Or would any one greatly desire to see the three 
hundred millions in India increase to that extent? 

Suppose England should do for the rest of the Moham¬ 
medan world what she has done for Egypt—double the num¬ 
ber of Mohammedans and subjects of the Sultan—would it 
further the cause of civil and religious liberty? Would this 
cause, or the cause of humanity in general, gain anything by 
the doubling of any of nine-tenths of the earth’s population? 
Unless the quality can be improved the quantity may be con¬ 
sidered sufficient. If mechanical or material improvements 
wrought could work a radical change in the systems that gov¬ 
ern their thoughts and sentiments, or change their adherence 
to a better system, there would be gain, but this has never yet 
been accomplished by the efforts of modern civilization. The 
net result has always been an enormous increase of Pagans 



6 


Brains and Brute Force . 


and Mohammedans. Education and scientific appliances they 
have rather adopted as useful weapons for the defence of their 
own system. The appreciation that improvements and good 
government has met with has always been of a selfish kind; it 
has never turned their sentiment in favor either of their masters 
or of their systems. 

Western nations may believe themselves safe in their civili¬ 
zation, their science and inventions, but the final dependence 
and final appeal in the struggle for predominance, will most 
likely be to bulk and numbers. Where a sparse and unsettled 
population of low type invites to settlement and expansion of 
a higher type, there is gain; but Europeans have never been 
able to colonize and expand among Asiatics; on the contrary, 
these have shown themselves able to colonize and expand 
among Europeans by crowding these aside. The growth and 
multiplication of our own kind, with its civilization and prin¬ 
ciples, is our expansion; the expansion in numbers of those that 
differ from us is theirs, truly and substantially, although we 
may have the honor of directing their government. 

What has been said of the activity of the higher civiliza¬ 
tion among the people of a lower type is applicable to 
countries like the United States, where different races are 
struggling for predominance. The native Americans have 
suffered in the struggle with foreigners for numerical 
supremacy; physically their strength and endurance has 
proved unequal to the contest. Their superior mental quali¬ 
ties, instead of helping their own race, are at the service of 
their competitors for the possession of the country; they will 
invent, plan and direct, and by their intellectual activity give 
the latter that chance for growth and expansion of which, with 
their superior physical endowments, they are able to take full 
advantage. Thus we have the sociological phenomenon of a 
people of a country, after being overcome in a struggle for 
existence on the ground of brute endurance, helping its com¬ 
petitors by its intellectual activity and accumulation of capital 
to complete the conquest. 

It is notable in the history of the Catholic Church that she 
never so loved her enemies as to belabor herself for the doub¬ 
ling of their number. As the dominant influence in expansion 
or conquest by Catholic countries, she has consistently acted 
upon the doctrine that mere ulterior conquest is of little use 


Brains and Brute Force. 


7 


while obtaining no hold on the inner life and sentiment of the 
people. The solid mass of Catholics from Rio Grande to 
Cape Horn, in the West India island and in the Philippines, 
bear witness to her zeal and success as an expansionist in 
the truest sense. The bond of union she created by her hold 
on the minds and sentiments of the people has remained un¬ 
shaken, even when intolerable abuse made them political ene¬ 
mies. Nor is this a small matter, for the world-struggle is 
rather between principles and the authority inherent in the 
great fundamental creeds of the world, than a struggle of 
races apart from their systems and creeds. Amalgamation 
and union of races and nationalities is not impossible, except 
where they are kept apart by conflicting systems and prin¬ 
ciples. 

For this reason, systems and principles that govern the vari¬ 
ous races must not be overlooked in a discussion of the race 
question. It would, apart from this, have little meaning. The 
masses come because here is room; or because those already 
here are weak enough to be overcome in a struggle for exist¬ 
ence. With them it is but the natural overflowing in the 
direction of least resistance. With the Church there are plans 
and purposes, deep-rooted and far-reaching, and the United 
States is a great price. 

The policy adopted in the pursuit of a certain aim is apt 
to be modified by the ruling system or principle. Represen¬ 
tatives of the reformed faith see in advancement of education, 
refinement, culture, and whatever belong to what is termed 
the higher civilization, the surest guarantee of strength and 
final supremacy. The elder faith rests its hope on bulk and 
numbers, cemented by sympathy of faith and feeling, being 
assured that in any contest between fundamentally opposed 
systems the final appeal will always be to brute force. 

The former policy has engendered a weakness manifested 
in a desire to be saved by special privileges and advantages, 
political, social or otherwise; proposed or attempted disfran¬ 
chisements are heard of in States, North and South. Victory 
in the race conflict is not gained by villifying and oppressing 
other races; you must increase your own strength and virility. 
The Constitution of our country requires a republican form 
of government in all the States, this imposes upon the States 
the duty of educating all the people so that they may have a 


8 


Brains and Brute Force. 


republican or popular form of government. Ignorance and 
disfranchisements create a privileged class; special privileges 
and power will furnish in this class a motive for the perpetu¬ 
ation of ignorance and disfranchisements that the power may 
be retained. This is the reason why education and enlightment 
is of slow growth where despotism in any form rules. 

But education alone is not a sufficient guarantee for strength 
and stability in our national structure; it affords no bond of 
union and sympathy, such as is furnished by oneness of race 
or faith. Already in our industrial centers we have a condi¬ 
tion represented hy a wealthy, luxurious, ruling upper class, 
with the masses, alien and antagonistic in race and religion, 
in practical opposition. The experiment of building a State 
with a minority, embodying the wealth, intelligence and power 
inherent in it, as the foundation, with the masses in practical 
opposition, is not safe, even if we were willing to employ des¬ 
potic measures, such as is represented by restriction of suf¬ 
frage; the force inherent in bulk and numbers will sooner or 
later assert itself. Such measures could but at best put off the 
inevitable, and this at the expense of liberty and progress. 

The temptation of cheap alien labor from abroad is obvious 
as one of the ways in which a home population may be dispos¬ 
sessed. When it ceases to fill the rank and file with its own 
sons, ceases to supply the fundamental of crude strength, 
bulk and numbers, it ceases to be master or possessor of the 
country. Our first temptation in this direction was cheap 
negro labor; Southern whites gained ease and wealth by the 
sweat of others, but have to divide the country with the ne¬ 
groes'—it is theirs in proportion to their numbers and strength. 
The South was saved from negro domination by the mountain¬ 
ous regions, the population of which was but little affected by 
slavery on the one hand or by the devitalizing influence of the 
“higher” civilization of the North on the other. Yet the ne¬ 
groes are not to be counted a national danger; they owe allegi¬ 
ance nowhere outside the United States—know of no other 
country. They are, upon the whole, in sympathy with what is 
fundamental in our civilization, and could furnish an almost 
inexhaustible supply of crude strength for its defense, if not 
finally alienated by indifference on the one hand and abuse on 
the other. The negro population, organized by the anti- 
American force, and with such head and leadership as that 


Brains and Brute Force. 


9 


force could supply, would be as formidable in another direc¬ 
tion. This is fully appreciated by leading - representatives of 
this force, and they are making strenuous efforts for its con¬ 
version ; so, likewise, of the mountain population of the South, 
which is still expanding—dying families do not engage their 
attention. Could they succeed here, then with their growing 
power in the North they would soon be in position to dictate 
the terms on which they would tolerate competition. 

The question at issue has been made to turn too much upon 
the term loyalty; as, for instance, the loyalty of Catholics or 
the Catholic Church, the want of which has in various ways 
been imputed to her or her adherents. As a rule, the Church 
has dealt patiently with the imputation; instead of repelling as 
absurd the idea of disloyalty, she has produced the proof and 
shown exultingly that Catholics indeed are loyal. Affection for 
the country in which we live, and expect our children to live, 
is a natural instinct, and need not be called in question. As 
for loyalty, it may come to mean one thing with one class and 
another thing with another, and be equally honest with both. 
Even with regard to the Catholic Church, as embodied in its 
authorities, we need not question their loyalty to the country; 
they realize that they have interests here of immense magni¬ 
tude, being able to figure out that at the relative increase of 
Catholics and Protestants, the country will ultimately become 
Catholic; at any rate, they may be depended on to take an 
intelligent interest in the destinies of the nation. The ques¬ 
tion, properly speaking, is not that of loyalty, it is a question 
what race, civilization and principles are to be dominant in the 
United States. 

As for loyalty to a civilization embodying Protestant prin¬ 
ciples, the question of loyalty on the part of those who pro¬ 
fess adherence to other systems and other principles is absurd. 
But even here we may admire the facility with which they 
accommodate themselves to it, and the policy that strives for 
peace where this is true policy. But this accommodation -and 
this policy is not to be confounded with unity or true affinity. 
As far as a portion of our population is estranged from the 
principles of our Protestant civilization, we have to make a 
discount in the reckoning of our national strength and vitality. 
Systems, in their nature antagonistic, can not create a national 
structure as solid and strong as where the system is one and all 


io Brains and Brute Force. 

adherents of the same system. The spirit of patriotism will 
strive for the supremacy of the best system, and patiently bear 
with what can not be remedied, but never commit the mistake 
of supposing that mere superficialties can make up for funda¬ 
mental differences. 

The Catholics do not fall into this error, but it is a mis¬ 
take quite generally made by Protestants. The typical Prot¬ 
estant has become the professed liberalist, theorist and senti¬ 
mentalist. His theories are always aside from any practical 
issue; professing to be liberal, it is nevertheless against his 
faith to defend the principles of liberal thought, lest he should 
be suspected of having settled convictions on any subject. 

If our liberal friends are aroused at all, it is generally to 
efforts as futile*as their indifference. Spasmodic zeal that vents 
itself in petty annoyances, useless demonstration and noise, is 
not helpful to the cause. Superficial peace must be preserved 
in spite of fundamental differences. Efforts that disturb the 
peace, but do nothing to gain ground for substantial advance 
are worse than useless. Often in the contest the Catholics are 
left with a solid advantage, while the concession to Protestant 
sentiment is quite superficial, as for instance, the floating of a 
flag over a schoolhouse, a doubtful way of honoring the 
flag, for the old adage is that “familiarty breeds contempt.” 
The Protestants should study the policy of the Catholic 
Church, and work along broad lines for actual growth and ad¬ 
vance. Some of these will be indicated. 

1. Physical and moral soundness that keeps strong and 
vigorous the power of reproduction and natural expansion is 
the fundamental. It is certain that no mere expedient could 
save a race of people that is physically degenerate or morally 
unsound. The question of race supremacy will not be decided 
by the sword, but by the corset, and a few other things. It is 
a sociological problem rather than a matter of broken heads 
and armaments of war.* 

2. Regulation and restriction of immigration in favor of 
nationalities kindred to our own race and capable of assimila¬ 
tion would seem an obvious measure if the interests of our 
civilization are an object of any concern. Fully 80 per cent, 
of immigrants now incoming are of races and nationalities with 


*For a full discussion see part 2. “ The Social question in the United States.’ 



Brains and Brute Force. 


ii 


whom the native American has no affinity nor kinship. We 
shall not make them ours, they will make the country theirs. 

The sentiment and policy that rules us is an inheritance from 
the earliest times, when the country was unsettled and prac¬ 
tically possessed by savages. It should be understood by*this 
time that we have grown to be a nation, with rights and re¬ 
sponsibilities as a nation. Foreign countries are not slow to re¬ 
mind us of our responsibilities; if their immigrants provoke 
harsh treatment on account of character and conduct, damages 
are claimed and war threatened. It is the right of America to 
decide what immigrants she will be responsible for, and care¬ 
fully exclude those for whom she will not accept the responsi¬ 
bility. 

The much-maligned movement of the “Know-Nothings” in 
the early fifties deserves attention as a significant and inter¬ 
esting fact in the history of our country. It would have been 
strange if the race in possession should have relinquished its 
supremacy without one grand awakening or struggle. If 
time, or their lack of success, has not justified all their methods, 
it has fully justified their apprehensions. If the brute courage 
that showed itself in excitement and turmoil had been pitched 
against an armed invasion, it would have prevailed, but it was 
of no avail in the, physiological struggle actually before them. 
Nor did the awakening result in any intelligent plan to mitigate 
the struggle or in anyrway to regulate the outcome of it. Baf¬ 
fled and bewildered at the outset, pride remained; it now denied 
a danger against which it had vainly excited itself, and took 
such comforts as it could of the situation—the population was 
increasing—the country being settled, etc. Small matters 
these; but the population had actually increased at a greater 
rate before the period of heavy immigration than it has done 
since. If this earlier rate of increase had continued—and with 
plenty of room for expansion, there is no natural reason why it 
should not—with an immigration supporting rather than over¬ 
whelming and contradictory, we should at present have had a 
population of one hundred millions as homogeneous as the peo¬ 
ple of England; instead of that we have a heterogeneous pop¬ 
ulation of three-fourths of that number, in which those of the 
race that held the country solidly sixty years ago appear as a 
remnant, fragmentary and scattered. That the arrestment of 
growth of the native race, and almost immediate abandonment 


12 


Brains and Brute Force. 


of fields of competition, was wholly clue to the heavy influx of 
foreigners is not maintained, but it is seldom that two races 
of radically different characteristics are so nearly balanced in 
strength and endurance that both will grow and expand while 
occupying practically the same ground. Almost always one 
or the other will cease the struggle for existence, and consent 
to—die out. The yearly incoming of a quarter million Slavs 
and Latins, with their natural increase, does not mean an ad¬ 
dition to our population that could not very well be provided 
without them; it means that the struggle for existence is in 
their favor, in so far as they find room for growth and expan¬ 
sion. 

Some years ago a member of a foreign government openly 
and officiously advocated the settling in this country of for¬ 
eigners in block that would keep them intact and save them 
from disintegration, as the surest means by which to under¬ 
mine and destroy our institutions. It made a great stir in this 
country; we are easily affected by theories, but facts are studi¬ 
ously overlooked. The facts referred to are fully understood 
on the other side of the Atlantic; they are watching and won¬ 
dering. The sociological struggle between races in the United 
States is of more interest than any campaign of battles and 
bloody sieges-. As Americans, we are little interested; we are 
permitted to indulge our vanity and boast of quantity and num¬ 
bers, although it may be the gain of others at our expense. 

Without entering upon the question of colonies and expan¬ 
sion by force or conquest, it may nevertheless be suggested that 
our first concern should be to defend and preserve the territory 
within the United States against alienation. Why should our 
native Americans be anxious for foreign conquest, and think 
it worth the while to sacrifice the only boy in the family for the 
sake of it, while wholly unable to stem the tide of foreign ag¬ 
gression within their own country? Conquest of impractical 
people abroad is poor compensation if Americans are losing 
ground in the struggle for existence within their own borders. 
The last-named contest is by far the more important and more 
decisive. In so far as portions of the United States territory 
are occupied by people alien in race, characteristics and senti¬ 
ment, incapable of nationalization and amalgamation, it is so 
much United States territory conquered and lost, irretrievably 
and permanently: conquest in a far more substantial sense than 


Brains and Brute Force. 


i3 


the mere imposition of foreign government on an unwilling 
people. A nation conquered by force of arms may regain their 
liberties, but a people overcome in the struggle for existence 
ceases to be, and the country is forever lost to its race. 

It is too late for a narrow Anglo-Saxonism. As of old, the 
race destined for possession has been found wanting. It has 
not been proof against decay on the one hand or unbridled 
greed and brutality on the other. We should further prove 
our unworthiness if we regretted on the ground of sentiment; 
a sentiment rooted in selfishness, capable of the worst perver¬ 
sions of reason and morality, should not be our final aim. 
There is no finality but in moral principles. It is still the prin¬ 
ciples that had their beginning in the reformation, and found 
expression at the birth of the Republic, that are the dominant 
issue in the world. Restriction of immigration along the lines 
of a narrow Anglo-Saxonism has nothing to recommend it, 
even if practicable, but along the lines of a civilization founded 
on these principles. Measures to maintain and defend this 
civilization should not be shunned to escape the charge of dis¬ 
crimination. To maintain principles, we must discriminate, 
we can have no other object in restriction, for no one opposes 
immigration on general ground. Enslaved minds, enthralled 
consciences, dominated by a foreign despotic power, narrow 
prejudices, race characteristics, rooted in centuries of ignorance 
and degrading superstition, is a real danger. 

3. Some kind of organized union on the part of Protestants 
in the United States would naturally suggest itself in view of 
the compact,and strong organization of the Catholics. The 
power of organization is more particularly noticeable in its 1 
influence on the two great forces of our civilization—our politi¬ 
cal government and the press, the representatives of which 
may feel no particular interest in the contest. In this case it 
will be natural for them to yield where pressure is brought to 
•bear upon them, so much the more as they are dependent on 
votes and popular favor. During a late contest about an im¬ 
migration measure, the Catholic Church was alone sufficient to 
defeat it, although it was undoubtedly favored by all the na¬ 
tion excepting. This is due to her organization. If one wishes 
to know the strength of an organization, and the pressure it is 
capable of bringing to bear, he has only to consult the politician. 
The weakness of Protestant organizations is evident from the 


H 


Brains and Brute Force. 


fact that our politicians do not fear them. They have a cheap 
way of showing their courage by openly flaunting them, and 
holding them up to ridicule, in congress and out. This would 
not be if it really took courage to do it. It is entirely different 
with the Catholic Church; at the mere mention of this organi¬ 
zation all voices are hushed, all faces grow pale; they know 
they have here to do with an organization that has purpose, 
strength and votes behind it, and that it is not to be fooled or 
cajoled in any way. 

4. A race of people that is active and strong is only limited 
in its increase by a limitation of the means of subsistence. 
Means of substance is represented by accumulations of past 
earnings and present opportunities to earn a living. The 
Catholic Church takes this fully into account. It exercises au¬ 
thority that prevents shirking of duties on the part of married 
people; but this is not enough; the young people must have 
chances to marry, and means to make a living. Here the help 
of the church is valuable. The priest is on the alert to find 
chances and opportunities for them; schemes of colonization 
and migration; local aid in every community to find employ¬ 
ment, and at the best possible wages, that will enable young 
people to marry early and raise large families, is a most im¬ 
portant function of the priest. 

It is doubtful whether the Protestant churches have ever 
bestowed a thought, or made an effort along this line. It is 
their hobby to be liberal, and they give away advantages reck¬ 
lessly, but they will not win unless they use those they possess 
for the furtherance of their own cause. 

Grander schemes to secure the accumulations of Protestants 
with which they push their propaganda are continually in 
process of execution. Priests, particularly fitted for the task, 
are sent out to work among the very rich for their conversion. 
It is here worth the while to make particular effort in each in¬ 
dividual case, and they have had notable successes. Of late, 
American heiresses have excited great interest* and with rea¬ 
son, for the accumulations of this country are many, the 
opportunities are plenty, and there is no easier way of gaining 
immense results. The pope, as well as other potentates in Eu¬ 
rope, have it in their power to bestow titles of nobility; princes 
and counts may be created by the wholesale; it is but a matter 
of a word or ceremony. They are sent over to hunt among 


Brains and Brute Force. 


15 


American heiresses, with what results need not be told. It 
must be acknowledged, however, that the stratagem is legiti¬ 
mate. Americans have no cause to complain, if they allow 
themselves to be fooled and plundered. Rome has never made 
peace, except on the field of physical contest. Every means 
and agency at her disposal is used for the furtherance of her 
interests. It is with her no desultory warfare with haphazard 
methods and inefficient leaders, it is a grand and constant move 
all along the line, and by the ablest and most experienced 
leaders. 

5. Proselyting, conversion from one party to another, is a 
means or agency the importance of which has been fully recog¬ 
nized by both parties. Among Protestants it has been relied 
upon too exclusively. They compass land and sea to make one 
proselyte, and pay no attention to their loss of millions through 
failure in the struggle for existence. However, it is a factor 
in the contest. 

Catholicism has strength peculiar to itself. Attempts by 
Protestants to succeed by imitation will meet with the failure 
of all imitators. As a system of ceremonialism or ritualism 
of accommodation to human nature in the popular sense of the 
term, Catholicism is the highest conceivable product; she is 
complete and perfect in this respect, and will always have the 
advantage of those that weakly and meanly try to imitate her. 

Ritualism has its purpose and strength in the enlistment of 
the emotions through appeal to the five senses. The emotions, 
and their powers, when sufficiently aroused, may be directed 
for a purpose; the purpose to be served depends on the guid¬ 
ing hand behind it all. If there is any evidence of more than 
human agency in the ritual of Moses, it may be found in the 
measures taken to guard against abuse of the emotions: quite 
often it is revolting to the feelings rather than “beautiful”; 
severe, rather than alluring. Distinctions between “clean and 
unclean” is the keynote to it all. Ritualism, as a priestly de¬ 
vice, is seductive to the understanding and conscience, its aim 
is to mystify and subordinate these that perfect control may be 
gained over the thoughts and actions of the devotee. Aside 
from physical force, it is always the main dependence of priestly 
despotism, and the gravitation is inevitably towards it where 
this is the tendency. 

There is ground outside of Catholicism. The Protestantism 


16 Brains and Brute Force. 

of Luther, Knox, Calvin and Wesley was a force, definite and 
certain, which no class of enemies would be likely in any way 
to discredit. There have been genuine reformations in the 
world, which prove that appeals on the ground of reason and 
higher spirituality is not a hopeless undertaking. How far 
Protestantism in our days is capable of making appeals on 
this ground that are likely to meet with response is a question 
for itself; but on purely religious ground, she must succeed 
here if at all. 

Protestantism has the advantage of a better history. There 
is not even a Catholic country on the face of the earth but what 
has had to put down the Catholic Church by force or threat 
of force in order to gain civil and religious liberty. The his¬ 
tory of Protestantism is the history of liberty and deliverance 
from tyranny and oppression. This should appeal to the in¬ 
stinct of liberty in the masses in behalf of Protestantism. And 
it is probably true that, except for the natural tyranny inherent 
in her, the Catholic Church could have remained supreme. Her 
religion takes with the average of humanity. The few that 
really sought truth and righteousness might have gone to the 
stake to the end of time, as they did for a thousand years, had 
her tyranny been anything less than unbearable. Outward 
acts compel attention, principles that underlie them are little 
studied or understood. 

It is probably true, that, for the present and for some time 
to come, the ground for contest will be civil rather than re¬ 
ligious—the ground of liberty and security. The churches 
are in the grip of rationalism; spiritual phenomenon has 
ceased. On the sea of speculation, where they have launched, 
the inevitable tendency is toward materialism, or an inert for¬ 
malism. Theorizing and fadism find their natural reaction 
in absolutism. The God-consciousness of the Prophet, that 
begets authority and its characteristics, ceases and this is sought 
elsewhere; hence we have approaches toward Catholicism now 
as an imitation, now as a professed hope of “union of all the 
churches.” The weakness that is without the realization of 
independent resources falls naturally before the bold assertion 
of a successful pretension, and in its helplessness overlooks 
even the memory of past experience. We had once church 
union, one and indivisible—we had union till life, thought, 
light and liberty were either lost or corrupted! it took centuries 


Brains and Brute Force . 


17 


of strife and millions, of martyrdoms to break the union and 
restore to mankind some of its lost birthrights. 

The Church in those ages was but a realization of the fear 
now expressed in the word “monopoly,” and has in this its 
explanation. On the one hand was poor lost humanity, with 
the crying necessities of its soul to be supplied; on the other 
hand was the one organization that owned and controlled the 
whole supply, visible and invisible, that alone had the right 
and privilege of its bestowal, to whom alone belonged the reve¬ 
nue, wealth, honor and power derived from it. The popular 
fear of a monopoly was realized in those days to a degree that 
has forever marked that period of time as “the dark ages.“ 

The ideal of Christ, to which the call for union has refer¬ 
ence, is founded on a distinction between the Church and “the 
world,” which is not regarded nor understood even as a theory 
but by a few sects. The prevailing idea now, as always, is the 
carnal one, something of show and circumstances, with a cen¬ 
tral authority to depend on for means of salvation. Depend¬ 
ence on priestly devices and mechanical ways of salvation is 
on the increase, and has been a marked characteristic of our 
age. A Church founded on this conception involves worldly 
power and worldly interests; a union of these interests would 
be the old monopoly. The religious sentiment distracted be¬ 
tween fear and selfish desires will continue to furnish occasion 
for worldly ambition; with its virulent passions, there is safety 
alone in parties fairly balanced together with the restrain¬ 
ing power of civil government, the means by which safety has 
been actually secured. This is also the only guarantee that 
truth and spirit will not be wholly obliterated. Here and there 
two or three may be gathered together in the name of Christ, 
to whom the spirit of Christ is revealed, union of such would 
be safe; but life is not upon the whole on sufficiently high level 
to be stereotyped into an organization along this line, that 
would not at once evolve a tyranny dark, damning and awful, 
in harmony with all experience. It does not take a monopoly 
claiming property right in the soul and conscience of the whole 
human "race to stir in human nature all that is malevolent and 
hateful in its defense. 


THE SOCIAL QUESTION IN THE UNITED STATES. 


In the first chapter of Exodus we have an account of the 
social conditions of the most civilized nation 4,000 years ago; 
read in the light of modern experience, it is instructive as 
well as suggestive. 

We have before us, in the chapter mentioned, a cultured and 
enlightened people, but with distinct traces of weaknesses, 
manifesting itself in a low birthrate, and a frailty among their 
women that made the natural processes of child-bearing a se¬ 
vere ordeal, and abnormally risky. We have this people con¬ 
trasted with an immigrant race, showing the opposite traits. 
Their women, we are distinctly told, “are not like the Egypt¬ 
ians,” they are “lively”; are able even to dispense with the help 
of the midwife, without inconvenience. Moreover, they are 
multiplying fast, so fast, indeed, that the Egyptians became 
alarmed lest they should be outnumbered, and in the end 
crowded to the wall by the greater expansive force of the 
foreign race. Means were tried to prevent this, they are in a 
measure enslaved, and loaded with heavy burdens, but work 
does not kill them, they are increasing even faster. Then the 
male babies are slaughtered outright, a heroic measure cer¬ 
tainly. We wonder that the Egyptians did not try assimilation; 
it does not appear to have been thought of by either race; per¬ 
haps divergence in type, in race characteristics and religion, 
did not make assimilation and amalgamation possible. A 
clergyman, a few years ago, in a widely circulated pamphlet, 
insisted that our foreign population of alien races must be 
“civilized” or they would go on raising large families, which 
would ultimately swamp the Americans. Here again, a means 
is hinted at which did not occur to the ancient Egyptians; the 
restraining or devitalizing power of civilization applied to 
those that were increasing too rapidly. As for our own im¬ 
migrants, there is not the least doubt of its operating among 
them; that is, those who do not by divergence in type and race 
characteristics keep aloof and maintain their separate quarters 
in our cities and settlements in the rural districts. Those kin¬ 
dred to our own race, capable of assimilation and amalgama¬ 
te 



The Social Question in the United States. 19 

tion, as far as they come in contact with the native race, are 
speedily affected. The disposition on the part of this class of 
newcomers to imitate those already here is natural; the ten¬ 
dency rather to imitate the worse traits is proverbial. There 
is for this reason a double importance in the example of the 
older population; they may be continually dragging down with 
them those that they have power to assimilate and that other¬ 
wise would strengthen them. In districts where Scandinavians 
and Germans are interspersed among Americans, the original 
characteristics speedily disappear; the fresh-faced, well-de¬ 
veloped girls that one sees in the villages of Scandinavia and 
Germany are looked for in vain, and we have a too common 
type, slim-waisted and delicate, with mottled, drawn faces, that 
speak of tension and strain due to various abuses, and largely 
to the compression of the body by corset, belt and other devises 
for that purpose. Where they live apart in large settlements 
they are “civilized” less rapidly. Where they are wholly kept 
aloof, centuries may not effect this change. The French 
Canadians, with their separate communities, are maintaining a 
birthrate of thirty-eight per thousand of population! while in 
Ontario, which has been thoroughly Americanized, we have the 
low rate of twenty. The extremes in the United States are 
further apart than this; the birthrates of the native race, ex¬ 
cepting the mountainous regions of the South, vary but little, 
fifteen in a thousand of population is what is indicated by pub¬ 
lished statistics and private information. In countries like the 
United States and Canada, where a contest for supremacy be¬ 
tween different races and nationalities exists, the facts con¬ 
nected with the birthrate and general vitality of the various 
races have a significance which it is necessary only to indicate. 

As we study the evolution of society from the earliest dawn 
of history, what strikes us most forcibly is the lack of it, so to 
speak. A repetition and similarity of cause and effect, pro¬ 
ducing the same general results, is the most distinguishing 
feature. It may fairly be said to be as much a problem now as 
it was four thousand years ago, how to produce a civilization 
that will develop manhood and womanhood, evenly well-bal¬ 
anced, and make the accumulations of wealth, knowledge and 
experience subject to this end. The failure has been conspic¬ 
uous, and it is largely the failure of human nature to make 
-anything but a grossly selfish use of advantages. 


20 The Social Question in the United States. 

In part, it is a natural tendency to extremes in some par¬ 
ticular direction, of which the danger is less when life is on a 
simpler and safer leved, as witness our present extravagant 
estimate of book-learning, from which especially women suf¬ 
fer. We have come to glory in achievements outside of lines 
natural to their life and work, rather than fitness for this, as 
indispensable to the welfare or even existence of society. We 
boast of ability to stand the strain and exult in examples of un¬ 
usual attainments, and youth will endure wonderfully, and sur¬ 
prising results be obtained when everything is bent in one di¬ 
rection ; but it is no longer necessary to prove that this strain¬ 
ing after an aim, that for the most part has no practical pur¬ 
pose, but the mere boast of having attained, is always at the 
expense of nerve-force and bodily vitality that unfits them for 
the more serious and practical purposes of life. 

The mental strain and confined sedentary life in the school¬ 
room is in too many instances immediately followed by the 
equally strained, confined and sedentary life at the desk in the 
various capacities in which women are now employed; and this, 
generally, at an age of immaturity, when growth, strength and 
development of body must fail, without exercise of a varied 
and healthy character. Undeveloped and unaccustomed, they 
are unequal to the demand upon their physical strength to 
which they must inevitably be subjected, if called upon to per¬ 
form the functions and work natural to a woman’s life; and 
we have a cause for the general complaint of “overwork” on 
the part of American women, although they do less work than 
those of any other nation. It is not wholly a fault of dispo¬ 
sition, when a body is without strength or knowledge of work; 
it is overworked if required to work at all. Work, even in a 
factory, where modern machinery has reduced work to a mon¬ 
otonous repetition of the same motion, is not to be compared 
with housework, with its varied occupations, in every attitude 
of the body, bringing into play every muscle and exercising 
every part. Housework, interspersed with work in the garden, 
or light outdoor chores, as aforetime was customary, brought 
women to a perfection of physical development now rarely seen. 

Lack of nerve force and bodily vigor, due to a variety of 
causes, produces a condition of physical inability in which the 
instinct of self-preservation becomes very pronounced, and will 
appear as an exaggerated form of selfishness and cowardice. 


The Social Question in the United States. 21 

The little life and strength possessed is all needed for mere in¬ 
dividual existence; there is not that overflow of health, power 
and spirit necessary for the production and maintenance of 
new lives dependent upon them. Withal, and even where the 
physical powers have not been impaired, self-consciousness, cul¬ 
tivated to an extreme, shrinks from the hard facts of life; 
healthy instincts and natural affections are overborne by cold 
deliberations of selfishness. 

It may be counted a problem whether “life is worth liv¬ 
ing it may be a question about the world and the human 
race, but there can be no question about strength and virtue. 
We may honor those that stand by a principle, even if it be 
false, but vice, weakness, disease and puerility are never so 
regarded. Our latest development of civilization does not in¬ 
vite judgment on the ground of principles; its aim is too sel¬ 
fish to include even the amount of care and responsibility nec¬ 
essary to the highest enjoyment. The ephemeral pleasures by 
which nature beguiles the irrational creation into the propaga- 
gation of the species are lusted after with effeminate propen¬ 
sity, and it has become an art or science how to indulge and 
evade the end designed. The secrets of nature are sought out, 
and the knowledge gained is used to cheat her of some of her 
rewards without fulfilling her nobler purposes. At what cost, 
let the nations and civilizations that have perished in their cor¬ 
ruption tell. 

One should fairly have hoped that intellectual development 
and culture, by which capacity for higher enjoyment is gained, 
would have resulted in a lessening of dependence on the mere 
passional as a means of enjoyment; but such does not appear 
upon the whole to be the case. In the earlier ages of the world, 
and in primitive society, we find the fact of life emphasized, 
rather than the evanescent pleasures connected with it. The 
glory and joy of having children was paramount and predomi¬ 
nated over the mere sensual pleasures connected, with their 
propagation. We find this illustrated repeatedly in the lives 
of the patriarchs, in men and women alike; examples and ut¬ 
terances are so numerous that quotations are unnecessary. It 
has been reserved for these latter days of evolution and prog¬ 
ress to reverse the process; the means is desire^, with lustful 
effeminacy, and the end feared and evaded by all the re¬ 
sources of scientific and popular knowledge. 


2 s a 


22 The Social Question in the United States. 

The same tendency finds a further illustration in the means 
used to gain the end of marriage. Our boasted “love matches'’ 
are effected by practices that promise as little of happiness and 
stability as is generally realized. Is it that our social life, cus¬ 
toms and education tend so little to the development of the 
practical, the useful and really beautiful in life and character 
that dependence on the passional has become so dangerous and 
degrading? One might wish that the mere business view of 
marriage was made more prominent for the sake of relieving 
this abnormal dependence. The nobler view of marriage, with 
its grave responsibilities is lost sight of, so are health, beauty, 
modesty and usefulness, that should answer to the higher pur¬ 
poses. As is inevitable, an inferior quality exaggerated does 
not produce results as desired, but failure only increases the 
tendency, flirtation becomes more desperate, witchery, for sen¬ 
sual effect, more heartless, the dress is cut lower, the corset or 
belt squeezed tighter. Girls, the offspring of corset-killed 
mothers already diminutive, frail, and delicate, are further re¬ 
duced, and their little life squeezed out of them by this practice. 

It is not to be supposed that this expression of a woman’s 
passions—extravagant, distorted and suicidal, is wholly a mat¬ 
ter of depravity; it is largely due to the fact that our peculiar 
customs and sentiments repress a frank and honest expression. 
The girls are taught they must tease and fool and flirt; they 
must deny with their tongue, and the consequence is that they 
express the more extravagantly by their manner. 

A woman would not dare to express in words a twentieth 
part of what is expressed by such a contrivance as the corset. 
If the full significance of the ingenuity and zeal exerted was 
perceived, could men and women look each other in the face; 
perhaps we may not doubt that, but if the effrontery is suffi¬ 
cient, why may not an understanding be arrived at without 
going these enormous lengths? Why these body and soul-de¬ 
stroying practices to gain a result so simple and well-defined? 
What measure of success is in it has to be attained on the pre¬ 
sumption that men are equally devoid of sense and good taste. 
The presumption is mostly a blunder; the destruction of health 
and good looks is too great to work for success, even from the 
lowest point of view. The Spartan lawgiver employed a 
means far more effective, and it did not destroy the health and 
beauty of their women, and likely affected their modesty no 


The Social Question in the United States . 23 

worse; there was a frank avowal of the purpose, and it was part 
of a consistent and well-ordered system. Our modern civiliza¬ 
tion should be ashamed of the clumsiness of its methods, if not 
of the damage entailed. As a contrivance for a purpose the 
corset would discredit the lowest intellectual type of mankind; 
it does its work badly, and does it at an enormous risk and 
sacrifice. That the idea of enhanced beauty has nothing to 
do with it % is.easily proved, for even in our days a sculptor who 
should take the wasp-waisted shape as his model for physical 
beauty would be laughed to scorn, and that by the very ones 
who practice tight lacing. 

Some two or three centuries ago the dress of the gentle¬ 
men rivaled that of the ladies in extravagance, in finery and 
foolish display; there has been great improvement in the way 
of simplicitly and comfort. If the men should squeeze them¬ 
selves into the wasp-waisted shape, the effect would be less 
deadly; it would incapacitate them for serious or sustained ex¬ 
ertion as it does the women, but in these latter the organs that 
are damaged are more complex ; they include those that be¬ 
long to the prenatal life of the child, as well as the vital or¬ 
gans of the individual. It is not to be expected or even desired 
that a woman’s dress should attain to the same degree of sim¬ 
plicity as that of the man; but it may well be demanded that 
health, beauty, modesty, usefulness and posterity shall not be 
sacrificed for a mere display of wantonness. It is noticeable 
that the scriptures take cognizance of this weakness in women 
—a readiness to sacrifice everything to what is uppermost in 
her mind, and make her subject to what ought to be the firmer 
will and wiser mind of the men. If patriotic and manly men 
have obeyed the scriptural injunction of “ruling well their own 
households” could these things be? But it has become true of 
us as was said in derision of the Israelites at one period of their 
history, “children are their oppressors and women rule over 
themand as always, when we try to improve on the senti¬ 
ments and precepts of the Bible, the result has been in an emi¬ 
nent degree disastrous. It is the prerogative and duty of men 
to save women from their weakness—if they fail in this, the 
whole race bears the penalty. 

Sentiment and pride will not avert punishment if the laws 
are broken. Far-reaching effects, with which v e have mostly 
to deal, are general deterioration, decadence, extinction. Local 


24 The Social Question in the United States. 

or immediate effects are diseases, distressing and loathsome, 
ordinarily common to a class of persons not to be named. The 
reference is not to the grosser forms of contagious venereal 
diseases, but to ailments generally designated “feminine weak¬ 
nesses,” “female complaints” etc., which furnish the medical 
profession of this country, regular and irregular, with more 
than half of its practice. These ailments do not often kill, al¬ 
though cancer, a natural termination, is becoming alarmingly 
prevalent. But more generally the subject, always a physical 
wreck, drags out a long existence, a burden to herself and 
those on whom she is dependent. The organs peculiar to the 
female sex are so much the center of her physical being, that the 
effect of any abuse or irregularity is apt to center here, from 
whence it reacts on the whole body. Some of the abuses bear 
directly upon these organs; compression of the waist causes ab¬ 
normal growths and deformities, obstructs circulation, causes 
congestion and laceration of vessels that hold blood, lymph and 
serum, which overflow, inflame, and finally escape as unnat¬ 
ural issues or discharges. Abuses of other kinds will pro¬ 
duce similar effects and aggravate the trouble. Social dissi¬ 
pation, late hours, irregular habits, overstudy, mental and emo¬ 
tional strain, etc., scatter nerve force and vitality, and make 
resistance to disease and recuperation hopeless. It may be 
considered part of the scheme of divine retribution, as it is the 
idea of sexuality, in a degraded form, that for the most part 
hovers around these perversions, so it is the sexual organs that 
principally are struck by these diseases, which make a woman— 
and man for that matter in a like case—at once incapable and 
disgusting to the other sex. And so they fail in the very respect 
for which they are inclined to sacrifice everything. 

The somewhat exclusive attention paid to one sex in this 
discussion of a subject that pertains to both is not due to any 
preconceived arrangement, but to the plain circumstance that 
the young men are not nearly as much a factor in the problem. 
In the North, where the condition is more general, the young 
men are mostly of foreign importation or extraction. Few 
boys are found in native American families, and of these a 
large percentage are “submerged” in the process of their career. 
But the typical American girl is not only found in American 
families, she reproduces her type in girls among immigrants 
kindred to her own race. The example of the native Ameri- 


The Social Question in the United States. 


25 


can boy, whatever it may be, has no great effect upon young 
men of foreign extraction, but women are imitative, and the 
example of the native American girl dominates her sex, except 
among races and nationalities that keep aloof. 


The purposes of a nation are mostly of a practical nature; 
what may be viewed otherwise has its root in the practical, 
and can not long exist without it. There must be physical 
development and strength, and moral earnestness to answer 
the purposes. Mental and emotional culture, intensive and 
exclusive, may produce interesting specimens, curiosities and 
oddities, which may satisfy the superficial sentiment largely 
responsible for the product; but a nation can not live and sub¬ 
sist on mere whimsicalities and oddities. In the economy of 
nature, woman is a necessity; the vitality and strength of a 
race depends on her even more than the man, for she is meant 
to furnish the physical basis for growth and development to 
a greater extent. In the animal world, the human species in¬ 
cluded, the female is abundantly supplied with strength and 
energy for all the functions pertaining to her sex; niggardli¬ 
ness and precariousness, even to a degree of total inability, 
is the product of civilization. Where society is natural and 
vigorous, woman takes the place that naturally belongs to.her, 
she fits it and fills it, excites no distinctive interest or concern, 
and there is no “woman’s question.” As the deeper sentiments, 
decay, rant and extravagance increase, as legitimate uses be¬ 
come impracticable, vagaries of all sorts flourish; the tribute 
of weak manhood becomes the nourishment of unworthy wo¬ 
manhood. We may be content to look at woman from a mere 
sentimental point of view, and if facts are shown or objections 
made, quote poetry and talk sentiment, but the incense of ado¬ 
ration with which we involve her will not save her from the 
discriminating process of the laws of nature. The slim- 
waisted, delicate type of woman is the death of any race that 
depends upon her in the struggle for existence. Much atten¬ 
tion has been paid to this subject as a theory ; it is surprising 
that no attention is being paid to its actual operation among us 
as a fact. As a race, what does it profit us that we have 



26 The Social Question in the United States. 

wealth, learning*, genius, ambition, aspirations, when notwith¬ 
standing all this we are in a dying condition for want of suffi¬ 
cient physical basis, or moral stamina to maintain it. 

Gallantry would save its divinity from the imputation of 
flaws or faults, but it is not a question of flaws or faults; more 
is at stake that a flimsy sentiment. Our foreigners possess 
the true sentiment of patriotism; it is not with them a mere 
matter of self-gratification or self-glorification; they raise large 
families and take an intelligent interest in the future of the 
country. It is a serious question with them—what is to be the 
future of a population of which their offspring is to form an 
important part. Our native Americans care for their country 
only as it ministers to their pride ; they boast of its greatness 
and glory, but what is the United States to them if it be given 
over into the hands of alien races, with whom they have no 
affinity or kinship? It is often asserted as though a matter to 
be taken for granted that the Northern races of people will out¬ 
live and outdo those of a Southern clime; but nature is no re- 
spector of preconceived notions; the migration of the nations at 
present is from the South towards the North; three-fourths of 
the immigrants arriving in this country are from southern and 
central Europe. Their spread is due to a higher birthrate and 
greater vitality; the final settlement of population in this coun¬ 
try will, if the present tendency continues, find them in pos¬ 
session. They will keep apart and be saved from the damaging 
example of the native race, while those kindred to that race will 
follow it. 

The reform forces have gathered against the liquor traffic, 
and the agitation against the drink-habit has become popular. 
But there are evils that strike more directly and effectually 
at the root of the tree of life. The native population of Maine, 
notwithstanding prohibition, is in a state of decrepitude, the 
birthrate lower than that of any community of which we have 
record, French Canadians fast taking possession of the State. 
The early Americans, although by no means teetotalers, were 
wonderfully strong and virile; in spite of massacres and lurk¬ 
ing savages everywhere, they multiplied amazingly; filled the 
Eastern States from Maine to Florida; spread their homes 
through the dark forests of the South to the Mississippi and 
beyond; crossed the northern mountains and filled the Ohio 
valley. But a change came; like a forest suddenly stricken by 


The Social Question in the United States. 27 

a blight, the branches began to drop, the leaves to wither, 
growth was arrested. 

The facts in the foregoing teach that a people may stand 
a great deal in the way of disorders and irregularities as long 
as the women do not become seriously involved; for the de¬ 
pendence on them as mothers there is no compensation or sub¬ 
stitute. Whims and weaknesses of women, seeming trifles, 
may destroy a race as war, famine and pestilence together could 
not do. I11 many communities throughout the country there 
are practically nothing but elderly people and old maids left of 
the native population, the mountainous regions of the South 
alone being exempt, and how long will it be before this reserve 
of early strength and vigor, too, will fall before the advance of 
—civilization? There have been cases like ours in the history 
of the world, but for rapidity of process nothing that quite 
equals it. In France, where a like condition has obtained, 
though less aggravated, the people have risen with a noble 
patriotism to combat the evil, and have accomplished much in 
that direction. Our national characteristic prevents any such 
consummation of zeal ; a condition, that in any other country 
would arouse to earnest efforts, both on the part of Church 
and State, is here viewed helplessly; if attention is called to 
it, the only answer is a cry of pain, and earnest attempts to 
cover up defects. Of former strength and glory we have left 
our pride, supersensitive as any disease. The desperate question 
with us is not about race or country, but to .save—our feelings. 
We have nourished our vanity till there is no heart to look 
facts in the face. Accustomed to the assertion of proud supe¬ 
riority of taking things for granted in our own favor, the task 
of rising to the occasion of honest investigation, frank confes¬ 
sion and earnest reformation is an arduous one; and even 
now. after the long and fatal delay, it would scarcely be more 
than a “dying repentance,” but it would go far to save that por¬ 
tion of the newer population, kindred to our own race, that is 
following in our footsteps, and perhaps the final subversion of 
our civilization. 

For more than a generation, while this condition has ob¬ 
tained, it has been left for individuals now and then to lift up 
a voice of indignation, protest and warning. Of organized ef¬ 
forts there has been none, nor upon the whole has there been 
any improvement. There have been secret knowledge and 


* 


28 The Social Question in the United States. 

eager catching at reassuring flatteries, squirmings and fitful 
outbursts, but there has never been the ability to assume a 
frank and practical attitude with regard to the condition. It 
will take combined and determined efforts by all the leading 
forces of our civilization to save it. Among these the church 
should be foremost when it is a question to deal with a moral 
evil; but the church people have been leaders in demoralization, 
and the churches are implicated by their example and silence. 
The principal Protestant denominations come together at their 
yearly conferences, and have to face the fact that membership 
and Sunday-school children not only fail to keep pace with 
the growing population, but are actually dwindling in num¬ 
bers where they have to depend on the native race exclusively, 
the figures of the general whole being kept up alone by work 
among foreigners. They cast about for causes seemingly, and 
are careful not to mention the cause. There is neither courage 
nor honesty to state the plain truth that there are not enough 
children raised among them to keep up the Sunday-schools; 
that the membership in the churches is growing old, and no 
new generation, worthy the name, has been provided to take its 
place. The meetings proceed with a pathetic repetition of old 
platitudes about “renewed zeal,” “work for the Lord,” and 
“building up the church;” of vices that are destroying the 
foundation for growth and development nothing is said. They 
wind up by passing their stereotyped resolution about Sabbath 
observance ; of their own lack of observance of the most vital 
laws of God and nature, we hear nothing. These representa¬ 
tives of a dying remnant feel authorized to instruct the great 
growing mass of foreigners that, with vigor of mind and body, 
are crowding them aside and taking their places. Let them 
first realize the situation, and have the courage to face it. and 
after that they may be able to take measures to arrest decay, 
and “to strengthen the things which remain.” On the surface, 
we have church respectability, ambitious plans, zeal for work, 
and everything apparently in working order; at the bottom is 
this dark flood of iniquity, undermining the very foundation 
of our race and civilization, so we may actually see it sink and 
disappear. What wonder we now hear that the churches have 
“ceased to believe in the Bible.” Faith in the Bible is not a 
comfortable matter, considering the facts in the case! Nor is 
there any flattering comparison between the grand heroes of 


The Social Question in the United States. 29 

the Bible and clergymen who look at the disintegration of the 
church and their race and dare do nothing, for there would 
be a flutter of hysteria and excitement if the nests of evil were 
stirred. Yet we are informed that our liberal Christians have 
discarded faith and theology in order to attend to practical 
questions; but the condition among our heterodox or extreme 
liberal churches is as bad as anywhere, and as little attended 
to. With proselyting efforts enough to convert the 
world, they have not gained one-tenth as much as they 
could have gained from natural increase had they been 
true to the laws of nature, of which they have much to tell 
us. On the other hand we know of a very orthodox, and by no 
means liberal church, that does attend to the subject in a prac¬ 
tical manner, and attends to it very effectually, too, within her 
own fold. If the Roman inquisition, with its rack and thumb¬ 
screw, had been to work among us these many years, they could 
scarcely have reduced the native Protestant population as it 
has been by its own demoralized condition. As was said by a 
Roman ecclesiastic in England, “it is not necessary for us to 
do anything, they (the Ritualists) are doing it for us far 
more effectually than we can do/’ so it may be said here, al¬ 
though the way it is done is different. 

As the church has failed, so has science. 

A condition that in the course of two generations has low¬ 
ered the birthrate among our native American race from 40 
to 1.5 in a thousand of population would make an interesting 
study for our sociologists. It is never a mere accident, but a 
process due to causes that touch life on many points, intel¬ 
lectually, morally and physically. How much the shrinking in 
our native population is due to the pressure of an enormous 
immigration; or whether or not the heavy influx of foreigners 
is rather on account of.a vacuum or voluntary contraction of 
our home population; or at least, a lack of stamina to compete 
in the struggle for existence. The cause of this: its beginning, 
perhaps, the evolution of some sentiment or new mode of 
thought; how much may have been contributed to it by the 
spread of a mere notion, with accompanying changes in habits 
and customs. Causes and effects, acting and reacting hastening 
the process down to our day. Its final result, its effect upon 
the destinies of the nation and the world at large. But our 


3 ° 


The Social Question in the United States. 


sociologists are busy with their theories, there is not even a hint 
of anything practical in their efforts with reference to the con¬ 
ditions that threaten our race and civilization.* 

The papers are not always neutral. A Southern daily speaks 
feelingly in an editorial about the glory of the Anglo-Saxon 
race, and its prospects in the contest with the negro for pos¬ 
session of the South; in another column it advertises means 
and medecines for killing of the white babies before they are 
horn. If all are not thus guilty, next the deadliest thing is ad¬ 
vertised generally. Nearly all have their fashion department, 
the standard is always the ultra-fashionable, wasp-waisted 
shape. These papers go into even the humblest homes, and 
what girl does not love to be in the fashion. She may not be 
able to get the richer material out of which to make dresses, but 
it costs nothing to squeeze the waist an inch or two tighter 
even than her more favored sisters. A nation may afford to 
allow a limited number, styled “society'* to kill themselves 
with fashion and folly, but when it permeates all classes—and 
the poor will do worse as imitators,— 

It may be questioned how far our popular form of govern¬ 
ment is in its nature fitted to deal with questions of this sort; 
but there is no question, on general principles, that it comes 
within the province of government to deal with them. The 
leading aim of our party government and secular press, both 
leading forces in our civilization, is success in the popular and 
material sense. However, it is only up to a certain point that 
our professed materialist can ignore moral issues. The moral 
or social question at a certain stage becomes political and per¬ 
sonal, it becomes a question of self-preservation and patriotism, 

* The appeal contained in this paragraph, together with a task fairly mapped out. 
has not, after the lapse of nearly three years, met with any response. VN hat follows 
should not be considered a performance of the task, but the coming sociologist and his¬ 
torian may find some hints in it. 

Sociology, in its practical aspect, is a study of social developments, and in effort to 
guide them. The idea of it as a general scheme, or system of laws, is circumscribed by 
the moral agency of man’s free will, which is to be reckoned with. Revolution is more 
than evolution in these developments, much can be learned only a history. Sociology 
has to do with the present, what may be learned to its advantage from the past, and 
what may be seen immediately ahead of us. Interest naturally concentrates on lines 
that converge towards final results or some kind of completion, be it decay and dissolu¬ 
tion, internal conflicts, a life or death struggle between races—sociologically, war is a 
matter for the historian ; so also are the s. eneral results of a sociological study, as illus¬ 
trated in one of the chapt ers. 

“As the church has failed, so has science." The thought here is not of sociology 
exclusively Nearly all the sciences have some reference to humanity and its well-being. 
But, aside from what is technical, scientists are among our representative people, and 
Science is the Braggard of the age; a threatened disaster to a civilized race should not 
find them silent The extinction of such a race should receive as much attention as the 
fossil of an extinct animal. If life itself is at stake, it would not be impertinent even to 
confine our attention to it, at least till the crisis is past. 



The Social Question in the United States. 31 

and the dictates of self-interest and natural instinct will de¬ 
mand interference. The question of country is not identical 
with that of population and the ground we tread upon; all 
races and nationalities of the earth stand ready to fill the 
vacant places, to make up a population, and they will think the 
ground worth occupying. The supply from northern Eu¬ 
rope has failed, but that of the Slavs and Latins is inexhausti¬ 
ble. It is not a question of population, it is our race, civiliza¬ 
tion, life and principles that are at stake. 


THE FITTEST TO SURVIVE. 


Nations and peoples crystallize around their ideals, their 
creeds and beliefs, which give them characteristics, direction 
and momentum. Those nations and peoples that have ideals- 
and faith in common have ground for union and for oneness 
of purpose, which may be depended on in any final struggle 
for predominance to keep them together and make them prac¬ 
tically one. 

The divisions of the world represented by these different 
ideals or creeds are as follows: The Mohammedan, the Roman 
Catholic, the Greek Catholic, the Protestant and the Pagan. 

Nations that retain their Original vigor or vitality, with 
nothing to interfere with them, will double their population 
every forty years, possibly in twenty-five or thirty; the ques¬ 
tion of their final numbers is merely a question of sustenance, 
of the ground they have got, or may be able to get, to occupy. 

In measuring the strength of these divisions, we must not 
only take into account their present numbers, but the ground 
they have in reserve, the room they have for actual expansion; 
mere imposition of rule does not count. 

The Pagan faith of Confucius or Buddha, with sects allied, 
have about seven hundred million followers in two grand 
divisions. The ground they have is practically all occupied; 
they can not expand much without gaining ground from 
others. This will be prevented, for nations will learn to guard 
against “friendly invasion.” 

The other divisions are better off with regard to reserve 
ground. The Mohammedans have the least, but will be able 
to expand considerably, with the help of civilization. They 
have also shown themselves successful in expanding among 
people not yet dominated by a distinct ideal. Their numbers 
are about two hundred millions. 

The Greek Catholics, represented by the Russian Empire, 
are over one hundred millions, not counting those held sub¬ 
ject of opposing creeds. But they hold ground in reserve for 
several times their present numbers. At their rate of increase 
they will swell their numbers to four hundred millions, within 
their own borders, in less than a hundred years. 



The Fittest To Survive. 


33 


Some six millions of the Anglo-Saxon race are held in sub¬ 
jection by Russia. They should be delivered while the Anglo- 
Saxon race and the civilized world has strength to do it. West- 
.ern civilization will need all her forces when Russia shall 
threaten Europe with four hundred millions of her own race, 
not to mention her prospects of enlisting twice that number 
of Asiatics in her service, something the civilized world may 
well do what it can to forestall. 

The Catholic faith has two hundred and seventy million fol¬ 
lowers, with considerable reserve territory yet to occupy, not¬ 
ably in South and Central America, where there is room for 
several hundred millions more. Great success has also been 
achieved in the struggle for existence on the ground of brute 
'endurance, by which ground has been gained in North America. 

The Protestant ideal has a following of 140 millions; reserve 
territory mostly in North America, to a considerable extent 
.alienated. 

The ideals of the three divisions—Greek, Mohammedan and 
Catholic—are the same in character: despotic, autocratic and 
world-wide in pretention. By accident, they are divided. It 
is well for the world to have it continue so. 

In each case it is .the supposed kingdom of God merged with 
worldly interests and political power. The world-wide pre¬ 
tention, or claim to world-wide dominion, is not, therefore, a 
mere ambition, but the claim of the system to be enforced 
with all means available by those true to it. Involved in it is 
war to the end of time, or the end of the systems, circum¬ 
scribed only by necessity or want of means. 

The Protestant ideal, identified with the Anglo-Saxon race, 
is that of personal right and liberty. If not always the purest 
conception, yet always the prevailing idea. Some nations, not 
Protestant or Anglo-Saxon, have a measure of liberty achieved 
with violence to their system, and in opposition to it. Liberty, 
here, is a precarious matter; it involves a standing quarrel with 
the system, as we have it in fact; it is always a question which 
is to be uppermost. 

The position of the Anglo-Saxon race is unique in this re¬ 
spect, and it is of peculiar significance when the other divisions 
have been able to encroach on her reserve territory, and ap¬ 
propriate a large share. The significance is emphasized when 
this appropriation has gathered momentum and is going on 


34 


The Fittest To Survive. 


at an ever-increasing rate. All the increase in the Northern 
States may at present be placed to the credit of alien races; 
theirs are both the immigrants and the large families. 

The reserve territories of Russia and the United States are 
comparable in extent and value; the manner of settling and 
developing nearly the same down to 1850. Since then the con¬ 
trast has been marked. 

Imagine half a million Italians and Austrians pouring into’ 
Russia yearly, and possessing themselves of her territory. Im¬ 
agine foreigners for the last sixty years pouring in at this 
rate occupying her reserve territory! Russia is settling her 
reserve territory by her own people exclusively, and doing* it 
at a faster rate than we, by turning it over to an alien popu¬ 
lation. 

Why should we be particularly eager to have all our re¬ 
serve territory occupied? Why should we be very anxious to 
have all our natural resources “developed” out of existence? 
A crowded population with no reserve territory means ugly 
problems; it means suffering; with alien immigration it means 
a struggle of races. As the Americans had no foresight to 
prevent this, so they had no strength to endure it—they had a 
theory. 

The theory of the survival of the fittest became popular with 
Darwin. ^ That the fittest will survice is not in itself a theory,, 
it is a fact; but our notion of the fittest to survive may be a 
theory, and a very faulty one. Americans thought at once 
they knew what it meant: it meant a schoolhouse on every hill¬ 
top, a college in every town; it meant learning, refinement, cul¬ 
ture, the latest fashion for the women, including the corset and 
some new sentiment to match it. That the race became sickly, 
began to dwindle and die while developing fitness along these 
lines, did not for a moment stagger faith in it. There is noth¬ 
ing like an infallible theory; an infallible book is nothing to it. 

Nature has no respect for sentiment or fine feeling unless 
it falls in with her general scheme: life and its continuance.. 
Much that we depended on did not; some of it might have 
served to embellish the superstructure, but became mischievous 
when put in the place of the fundamental, or cultivated at the 
expense of it. Book-learning, culture, the latest fashions, etc., 
had no chance in a contest with brute strength and domestic 
sentiment to match. 


The Fittest To Survive. 


35 


Some Americans are congratulating the country on the ac¬ 
quisition of this strength. It is more proper to congratulate- 
those people on the acquisition of the country. Congratulations 
belong to the victor, not to the vanquished. But there is not 
in the qualities exhibited the highest reason for congratulations, 
even if we are so unselfish as to wholly forget ourselves. The 
lion and the tiger survive in the jungle, but there are nobler 
and more useful animals. The qualities needed are scarcely 
even of so high an order as those required on a field of battle,, 
though it be but physical courage. The Chinese will not meet 
civilization on a field of battle, but will conquer civilization in 
a struggle for survival by brute endurance and sheer persist¬ 
ence. The native American was a strong race up to the time 
of the change—perhaps as strong a race as ever existed—but 
there are other considerations. 

It is a struggle for existence in which the fittest to struggle* 
survive, no matter how undesirable they may be otherwise. 

In our days we may look for a rapid increase of people who- 
have preserved their natural vigor. What used to kill them 
in olden time—war, pestilence and famine—has been largely 
eliminated. Famine will operate as a difficulty in obtaining 
sustenance. So high a premium will be put on exertion that 
the delicate, the refined, the fastidious and weak will not pay 
it. When the mass of common people become such, and are 
easily crowded out of existence, they leave a peculiarly inviting 
field for the foreigner. The Latin, Slav, Celt and South Ger¬ 
man might have immigrated to South America, where there is 
room for hundreds of millions, and where their own faith, 
standards and ideals reign supreme. But it is easier to take 
possession of a country where everything is made ready for 
them than to subdue the wilderness. Americans conquered 
the wilderness at great risk and sacrifice. The aliens are con¬ 
quering the Americans and the finished country without any 
trouble to themselves. 

The Anglo-Saxon race might well consider the advisability 
of getting off the earth altogether, rather than to leave here a 
weak remnant. It will be hard on that weak remnant some 
day, for the other party does not believe in persuasion as much 
as in force. 

But representatives of our race come to our rescue with an¬ 
other theory. It is that of evolution. It does not matter just; 


36 


The Fittest To Survive. 


what it may mean; it is sufficient to know that the whole 
scheme is entirely in our favor, and works with the regularity 
and certainty of clockwork for our survival, without regard to 
fitness or means to an end. But if a hitch should occur, it will 
not now much matter, for we are nearing the age of universal 
peace and brotherhood; human nature has softened in sympathy 
towards all; the horrors of the middle ages could not be re¬ 
produced. 

Just as this was thought settled we began to hear of people 
being tortured and burned alive around in the country, 
North and South, while multitudes of the foremost race and 
civilization stood around and gloated over the agony of their 
victims, just as in the middle ages. It was the spirit of fan¬ 
aticism ; the spirit of race or creed antagonism. It is the same 
in all ages, and will always go to the same extreme whenever 
there is occasion or opportunity. 

The kingdoms of this world belong to Christ. The pope is 
his vice-regent. He is supreme. As true as the spiritual is 
above the temporal, and God above man, so is he, the repre¬ 
sentative of God and the spiritual world, above all earthly 
institutions, governments, kings and potentates. This is not 
only a high ideal, but the realization of it is exceedingly profit¬ 
able. The church is the repository of the truth that saves the 
world, and must not be liberal towards error. There is con¬ 
nected with the spiritual monopoly worldly interests of im¬ 
mense magnitude: revenue, honor, power, dominion; she can 
not be disposed to be liberal towards a competitor. There 
is this double reason why the church can not be liberal: Her 
selfish interests are not only not contradicted by her spiritual 
aspirations, but are fortified by them. Her worldly interests 
and her highest obligations pull in the same direction. We ap¬ 
peal to the conscience of a commercial monopolist to be liberal, 
and are consistent; we appeal in the same way to the church, 
and immediately remind her of her obligation not to be liberal. 
There is embraced in her monopoly both the kingdoms of this 
world and of the world to come, and we ask her to be liberal 
towards a competitor when every voice, both of her self-interest 
and spiritual aspirations demands that she shall not be liberal. 

As the church lives up to her principles, so she lives up 
to her opportunities for the enforcement of her principle. These 
opportunities comprehend all that is within the range of hu- 


The Fittest To Survive. 


37 


man possibilities, restricted only by policy or necessity. The 
church has never allowed that she is to be confined to persua¬ 
sion if force is available. A commercial monopoly within a 
state is considered in the nature of a usurpation and against 
public policy; the church claims hers as a natural and divine 
right; she may not only not be considered illiberal in not allow¬ 
ing competitors, but must be accepted in her exclusiveness 
under pain of severest penalties. She is, therefore, consistent 
in considering herself persecuted if she is not allowed to per¬ 
secute. 

The interests of the lay members are not in every way iden¬ 
tical with those of the authorities. Worldly interests involved 
do not extend to them. They are, however, wholly excluded 
from any voice in the conduct of the church; as they do not 
make her principles, so they do not regulate her policy. With 
the lay members it may sometimes be a question between their 
own interests and those of the authorities. Hence we have 
dissensions between the .two. But the lay people can not 
dissent in any way without endangering their souls’ sal¬ 
vation according to their own avowed faith. This checks dis¬ 
sension, and, indeed, wholly prevents it, except when condi¬ 
tions become desperate. Connected with the system is the in¬ 
evitable tendency of every despotism. This has lead the mem¬ 
bers to restrain the authorities even at the risk of their spiritual 
interests. Sometimes, as lately in the Philippines, opposition 
becomes pronounced because abuses become violent ; a desirable 
possession, a beautiful wife or daughter—dungeons, torture, 
death; supreme authority can never fail of ways or means. In 1 
spite of all such possibilities, however, to ask even Catholic 
lay-members to be liberal is to ask a great deal, to expect it is 
presumption; we ask them to endanger their souls’ salvation 
according to their own faith. Dependence on liberality that 
involves such unnaturalness is a precarious sort; it is always 
a question what will predominate, spiritual fear or fear of op¬ 
pression. In countries like Germany and the United States, 
where Protestant government curbs the system and prevents 
excess, leaving little ground for quarrels and dissensions be¬ 
tween the priests and the people, these become peculiarly de¬ 
vout, and are ready to suffer, bleed and die for the church and 
her authorities. 

The principles of the Reformation, Protestantism, embodies 


38 


The Fittest To Survive. 


the protest against the monopoly, its spiritual errors and: 
worldly interests. If the Anglo-Saxon race and civilization 
has any standing, it stands for a continuance of this work of 
the Reformation, its principles and purposes. Aside from 
this it has no work or mission, its individuality is extinguished,, 
it is merged with the rest, and we are back to where we were be¬ 
fore the struggle for light and advancement. In so far as it is- 
pushed aside, crowded down and out in the struggle for exist¬ 
ence, it is overcome, defeated and vanquished. In so far as 
representatives of other races find an entrance on our ground 
and territory to occupy it, they have gained and conquered that 
much ground and territory, whether it be to the extent of one 
individual, half a million, twenty or more millions, it is so* 
much taken from us and our strength, and so much added to 
theirs. The name and form of government is nominal and 
changeable to the extent that it is not representative, and cuts; 
no figure in the final estimate. 


MORALITY AND MARRIAGE. 


Immorality is not necessarily the first cause of deterioration 
in a people. It may be foolish fashion, mistaken notions, lux¬ 
urious, idle living, enervation and effeminacy, all of which 
certainly favor immorality; lapses from virtue become fre¬ 
quent, and is aggravated by a desire to shift the burdens and 
responsibilities of life. All of this may exist in a greater or 
less degree consistent with the maintenance of the conventional' 
forms of propriety and public avowal of social and moral obli¬ 
gations. These obligations are well defined, and do not in¬ 
clude what is mentioned in the first part of this paragraph, but 
extend to the sexual relation in so far as it is a question of 
marriage and its regulations. What affects this is the business 
of society, and disadvantages in this respect may be discussed 
with propriety. 

Failure of marriage is not considered so much a sin as fail¬ 
ing to marry. When men and women, properly qualified, fail 
to marry, it is rightly considered that society and the race has 
suffered a loss. 

A people with normal conditions, simple habits, no artifi¬ 
cialities to hamper or retard, has not enough failures of this 
sort to hinder its growth. The advantage is appreciable in a 
rivalry between races. 

Poverty, barring its tendency to produce tramps and vaga¬ 
bonds, is but little responsible for failure. Poor people, with 
small ambition and few prospects, are probably, of all, the most 
apt and ready to marry. Erratic temperament and inordinate 
ambition, especially when coupled with slender means and 
small abilities, is often the cause of tardiness and failure. 

Lack of attractions. Our habits, fashions and customs 
are not calculated to produce beauty of face or form. Lack of 
health and vitality from the same cause: The prospect of doc¬ 
tor-bills is enough to frighten many. 

Lapses from virtue on the part of men can scarcely be 
counted against marriage, as women do not seriously object. 
In proportion, however, as dissipation becomes ruinous, there 
is destruction of legitimate results of marriage amounting to 
the same. 


( 39 ). 



4o 


Morality and Marriage. 


The same tendencies on the part of young women counts 
against marriage, for men seriously object. Its extreme form, 
public prostitution, accounts for failures, for those seduced are 
generally the attractive and physically fit, of which class there 
are not enough for legitimate purposes. 

Lack of confidence, due to general lack of character: Unless 
there is something to inspire confidence we are loth to commit 
life and honor to another’s keeping. 

Lack of facilities for arrangement: Too many artificialities 
and cumbersome trivialities. 

Unwillingness should not be considered a cause. That 
would be a reflection on the ways of nature. The difficulty 
exists in the artificialities of society, not in individuals. 
Schemes for taxing to incline to willingness are therefore 
irrelevant. 

Barring a very few, therefore, whose work and mission 
makes the distractions of domestic ties undesirable, failures 
are due either to lack of persons fit for marriage, or want of 
facilities to suit all cases. Either way, society should con¬ 
sider the remedy. 

Difficulties due to lack of fitness and attractiveness involve 
reforms of moral and physiological import. Customs and 
artificialities bearing upon arrangement are mere matters of 
form, and reform has no import beyond that of better facilities. 

We are undoubtedly more burdened with artificialities than 
any other people. Our opposites in this respect, the Orientals, 
take no chances with a passion in which is involved so much 
risk to life and morals. Even among us, with our phlegmatic 
temperament, the scramble for the best girls causes half the 
murders and suicides committed. The risk to morals is a 
larger question, and not to be dismissed lightly. 

It is true that in those Eastern countries the girls are bought 
and sold, but they are kept fresh and clean for the purchasers. 
They are not allowed to become shop-worn, or second-handed. 
Here, we have too much borrowing for experimental pur¬ 
poses ; one should be able to decide whether or not he wants 
a piece of goods without too much handling. It is not fair to 
the one who is finally expected to take it. 

In society, the girls are fairly guarded up to the time of 
their debut. Outside, a keen rivalry exists, the girls are 


Morality and Marriage. 


4i 


pushed at an early age; young men, without character or re¬ 
sponsibility, often allowed to run about with them alone by 
day and night. Our system places great dependence upon 
character and self-restraint. Character should be maintained 
or the system modified. It also depends much on opportuni¬ 
ties and accidents; in nine out of ten love-stories results are 
brought about by accident, often bordering on the miraculous. 
So important a matter should not be left so much to accident; 
the bargain-counters of the East score another advantage. If 
natural selections, personal choice and ripening acquaintance is 
the way, opportunities must be afforded; and, considering the 
importance of the matter, it is not too much if, for the time 
being, it be made a study, or even a main business. But the 
end must be kept in view, and the value of opportunities and 
methods tested by results. If liberties and misplaced confi¬ 
dence tends to discredit the girls and accustom the young men 
to license, it is not productive of desirable results, and it be¬ 
comes a question of safer and more effective proceedings. A 
mode of waltzing has come into vogue that requires the man 
to clasp his partner to' his bosom in a regular embrace while 
waltzing. It is well if the woman is his own; otherwise it is 
pushing things hard along lines of least resistance, where vic¬ 
tory is of little value. The inducements offered are of no 
higher character than at the bargain-counter of the East, where 
risk of damage by indiscriminate handling is eliminated, and 
facilities afforded for business-like procedure, which is an ob¬ 
ject with men who do not naturally take to artificialities and 
ceremony. It will be allowed that there is more than one way 
of doing a thing. Jacob falls in love with Rachel, works and 
waits for her seven years. Isaac sends his trusted servants to 
find him a wife, and the ideal marriage among the Patriarchs 
is the result. In some countries, common sense is resorted to 
when the game fails; among us, this is insisted on with rig¬ 
idity; it is the form, and it is amazing to what an extent a 
woman will sacrifice the main issue for the sake of a mere 
form. 

If the natural climax of intimacy between the young was 
determined as such by law, our easy ways with them would 
assume an aspect of consistency. In the old countries, when 
a young man has undue advantage of a girl, as a rule, he mar- 


42 . 


Morality and Marriage. 


ries her. Here, the accepted rule among young men is pre¬ 
cisely the opposite; he leaves her. What is left the girl ? Shame 
or a crime. In Europe she gives gives birth to her baby; in 
America she goes to a doctor. Doubtless, we have in this 
a cause for the introduction and prevalence of criminal abor¬ 
tion, among married women as well as unmarried. When 
two people of opposite sexes mingle their blood and life, they 
are married. Marriage in fact should be invested with all 
the obligations of marriage*; no easy escape' for a young man 
to leave the girl in the lurch with a baby. He has committed 
matrimony; she is his wife. A ceremony, although pre¬ 
scribed by law, or otherwise, does not alter a fact, which 
should be recognized regardless of ceremony. 

Some people in considering the social and racial question 
seize upon divorce as the one thing to be remedied, as others 
do on the drink habit. Both, in their worst aspect, are suffi¬ 
ciently bad, and deserving of attention; but they are too far 
down on the list of causes to come in for extensive consider¬ 
ation in this discussion, which must confine itself to the main 
issue, and those evils which strike more directly and effectually 
at the root of the tree of life. 

A race of people may be virile and strong, although the 
divorce evil is considerable. So it was in the time of Moses, 
and even now in Eastern countries. Among us divorce, to 
some extent as a cause, but more as an effect, is mixed up 
with our social condition, and we have the opposite result. 
The reason of the difference is that in the East the men are the 
cause, while with us, women are at the bottom of it, and this 
is a much more serious matter in its effect on the life of the 
race. 

Christ did not criticize Moses on account of his divorce laws, 
but insisted on a higher level for his followers, which it is for 
them to attain to. The state may have to do with conditions 
similar to those in the time of Moses, and accommodate itself 
to them. But this should not go to the extent of encourag¬ 
ing divorce, which is an evil however we view it. Young 
women who marry with the mental reservation of discarding 
the husband shortly, and securing another, perhaps already 
bargained for, are generally rewarded with a substantial 


Morality and Marriage. 


43 


money consideration out of the wronged man's earnings for 
performing this trick. Marriage and divorce becomes a series 
of experiments for profit and pleasure, in which legitimate 
results are discounted as extremely inconvenient. 

There is damage in this to the state and society. Divorce 
is an evil at any rate, and if the state does not prohibit it, it 
should at any rate not encourage it by putting a premium on 
trickery and rascality. The ideal union, with community of 
interest, has already been set aside as impracticable for our 
times. Women are allowed to hold property in their own 
name, both before and after marriage. Where money is in¬ 
volved it is important to do strict justice without partiality or 
favoritism. 

We may think it an innocent game, this playing with senti¬ 
ment at the expense of principles—even to the extent of abdi¬ 
cating our places as men and inviting women to take them— 
but we may create an abnormal selfishness, and destroy those 
qualities in women on which rest the life and continuance of 
our race. Throughout nature, much is demanded of the fe¬ 
male as the price of this; if she is unfit or unwilling to render 
it, it comes to an end. Strength can not be produced in a wo¬ 
man any more than in a man, on a diet of trash and artificial¬ 
ities. Flashy sentiment always precedes the advent of po¬ 
litical agitation, and wherever the froth of this agitation of 
woman’s question comes on top, we are sure to find moral and 
physical degeneracy at bottom. 


REVOLUTION AND DECAY OF THE NATIVE RACE 
IN THE NORTH. 


The great battles of the world in which thousands of men 
have been slain, and in which the fate of nations, races and 
civilizations have hung in the balance, and been decided for a 
long time to come, or permanently, are records of history. 
We read about them, study them, and wonder. As nations 
advance in refinement and culture, wars become less frequent, 
and the fate, the destinies, of nations, races- and civilizations 
are decided by other means. The physiological contest takes 
the place of battles. To be armed with qualities of mind and 
body becomes more than a figure; it becomes a hard, palpable, 
merciless fact, and nations, races and civilizations rise or 
perish, as they happen to be armed or not armed in this way 
for the conflict. 

But they do so silently. No blare of trumpet calls atten¬ 
tion to it, no noise of arms rends the air, and makes the world 
to wonder. Silently and mercilessly the combat goes on ; so 
noiselessly that the historians do no even catch the idea of it,’ 
and it is not recorded as a lesson for the present or future. 

The native American young men of fifty or sixty years ago 
were strong, stalwart and plenty. They had conquered the 
wilderness, and looked forward with confidence to the time 
when their children should fill it to .its utmost border, a conv 
pact mass, strong with their own strength and vitality. Their 
young women were like them, seemingly destined to be the 
mothers of a mighty race. 

Had the promise been verified we should not have to import 
a new nation of people every year, as for fifty years past, to 
maintain an increase equal to that of a healthy people without 
immigration. We should have been as many as we are had not 
a single immigrant landed in the United States since 1850. 
The country would have been wholly saved to the Anglo- 
Saxon race and the Anglo-Saxon ideal. The head of the op¬ 
posite would not have counted this country as a principal 
source of his power. His supporters, of many races, would 
not have overrun it from east to west with hopes—not extrava¬ 
gant in view of present advances—of winning it all. 

( 44 ) 



Revolution and Decay of the Native Race in the North. 45 

The history of the United States for the last sixty years has 
not been one of assimilation, but of conflict. The native race 
has not assimilated the immigrants, but has been displaced by 
them. Nor have the immigrants assimilated the Americans. 
It is hardly possible to assimilate a sickly, dying race ; those 
that meddle are destroyed in the attempt; those that keep 
aloof are the winners. The supposed infusion of new blood 
and virile strength into such a race is a myth, it is corrupted 
by contact or dissipated uselessly. A race is weak and sickly 
on account of sufficient causes; its only salvation'is in elimina¬ 
tion of the causes. Those that escape the general condition 
do so by independent effort in this direction. The only effect 
of a strong race on a weak one is that of competitor; it nat¬ 
urally wins in the competition, and hastens the exit of the weak 
race. It.is a process of substitution and displacement. 

However, the native race was not weak at the beginning of 
this conflict, and did not yield without a struggle. But where 
is the historian that has told the story of this defeat, of this 
revolution of destinies for a continent? Had the United States 
been invaded by a foreign army, and been defeated in a hun¬ 
dred battles, till the whole country had been overrun by the 
enemy, it might not have been so serious, and might have been 
less worthy of record. Nations and countries have been thus- 
defeated and overrun without suffering permanent damage. 
The root remained sound, and the superstructure was soon 
repaired. Nevertheless, had the United States been defeated 
in a single battle, and the country invaded, it would have roused 
the whole nation, and been recorded by the historian for all 
times. We should have learned the lesson, studied it, and rem¬ 
edied defects. But the United States has been the battle¬ 
ground of a physiological contest the last sixty years, and there 
has been many a crisis of more importance than a Waterloo. 
Even our stupendous Civil War, with its sacrifice of half a 
million men—a tremendous blow to a race at a critical time, 
but it recuperated in the South, and might have done so in 
the North—even the Civil war, with its carnage, is but an in¬ 
cident, comparatively a digression or side-issue, if the real 
history was told. 

Future developments, in line with those of the United States, 
will force the idea on the nations that the physiological con- 


.46 Revolution and Decay of the Native Race in the North. 

rfiict is the modern warfare that decides the destiny of races 
:and civilizations. We shall then guide this warfare with all 
the skill, ingenuity and foresight that we would physical com¬ 
bat. We shall avoid the conflict, if possible, by barring out 
the invaders, if it takes armed resistance to do so. If they are 
already among us, the greatest minds of the age, and the 
•greatest energies, will be devoted on both sides of the conflict. 

It will not be denied that the greatest minds and greatest 
energies have been devoted on one side of this sixty years’ 
conflict by which the native American race in the North has 
been nearly annihilated. Of Americans, it may fairly be said 
they never had a practical thought on the subject; their tra¬ 
ditional beliefs and sentiments left no room for it. The con¬ 
flict has passed over them without leaving more than an in¬ 
definite realization, a dim consciousness of being crowded and 
let down, sometimes irritation enough to cause murmurs and 
helpless wrath, but never sufficiently strong to find expression 
in definite thought or action. 

The historian may affect as dim realization or recollection. 
He may slip over the whole serious question without any no¬ 
tice of more than superficial changes. Yet the story of this 
inner life of the nation, its struggles, the forthcoming con¬ 
ditions, and net results, could be told. It has not come about 
without mighty causes. It has had a beginning, and the proc¬ 
ess could be traced. 

This beginning is perhaps the most curious part of it. Only 
•once at the very outset do we find the physiological struggle 
break out into open disorder. It was in the early fifties. The 
Irish famine forced immense numbers of the Irish people over 
the Atlantic. Their coming gave occasion to sharp compe¬ 
tition in the labor market. Up to that time the native Ameri¬ 
can boys had been plenty and robust; you could find them 
everywhere as true as now you can find them nowhere. They 
were neither scarce, expensive or fastidious. They could be 
hired to do all kinds of work, and did it at less wages than is 
now asked by our foreigners. The Irish caused a sharp com¬ 
petition, nevertheless. They were hungry. They were used 
to hard conditions. They were willing to take up with hard 
conditions. They meant to live at any rate—no matter on 
'what conditions. Here, apparently, is where the native Ameri- 



Revolution and Decay of the Native Race in the North. 47 

cans drew the line. Well, in competition with a race thus will¬ 
ing they simply had to go; they could not occupy the same 
ground. They kicked up some bad work in the way of turmoil 
and disorder, and then they went; their former place knew 
them no more. 

Nor did any other place know them. We have ingenious 
ways of comforting ourselves, and imagine that when one race 
comes in the other is crowded higher up; but there is not room 
for a race of people anywhere except on the ground of honest 
work and industry. When it is crowded off this ground it 
ceases to exist. 

In our days the work of decay and dissolution is easily ob¬ 
served ; it is not necessary to ask how a race of people passes 
away, but it is a question about the beginning. We may say 
that they would not endure the competition nor bring up chil¬ 
dren to endure it, and this is the larger part of the explanation. 
It would be easy to construct an argument tracing the whole 
train of evils from alien immigration, with which it had its be¬ 
ginning; but the process would have been less rapid and de¬ 
cisive had not other causes conspired to produce disaster. 

The failure of their young men to obtain work in competi¬ 
tion with the foreigners, their being crowded out of their 
places, would naturally result in a stoppage of growth to a large 
extent. Marriage would become rarer, if not the family small¬ 
er. In a healthy race children do not fail if there is marriage, 
but this is apt to be long deferred, and often not undertaken at 
all. This is to some extent true of the Irish of to-day. .They 
have themselves got competition, and not a few of their young 
men fail to marry, but when they do they raise children. One 
would have looked for something similar to this among Amer¬ 
icans when competition became sharp; what actually took 
place was a complete demoralization of their forces. 

How did this happen? What brought in practices not till 
then known, and what spread them with lightning rapidity 
from the cities to the remotest farm and village, at once in¬ 
volving the whole population? 

In a measure, this may be accounted for by the press, which 
by this time became universal as a medium of expression and 
communication. Yet the start of this mighty revolution would 
still involve some mystery, at least with regard to some of the 
practices. 


48 Revolution and Decay of the Native Race in the North. 

We can account for the introduction of the corset among 
all classes. The fashions and their advertisers did this. It 
will alone destroy a race. The northern countries of Europe, 
where it is being introduced among all classes, have nearly 
ceased to send us immigrants. We get them from countries 
where there is, as yet, a wall of distinction between “society” 
with its corset, its fashions and follies, and the peasant class, 
preserving this latter as recruiting-ground for their own and 
other countries. 

We can account for the abnormal demand for book-learning, 
the mental and emotional strain of which did much to make 
nervous wrecks, especially of young women. The new ideals 
did this. 

Less easy do we account for “a nation of dyspeptics.” To 
eat indigestible food and explode it through the bowels with 
a poisonous pill became a general rule for dieting. But this, 
at its worst, is a slow process; stronger, more simple and ef¬ 
fective means were used to kill. 

In a more marked degree, how did the idea, the knowledge 
and practice of criminal abortion come among them, and at 
once take possession of the whole population, from the Atlantic 
to the Pacific? There is a cause, plain, palpable and direct. 
When we wish to be nice about it, we use indirect means; the 
direct way of killing is more brutal, but both may be equally 
effective. 

It can not be urged in excuse of this practice that there was, 
or is, no more room for babies. If there is room for half a 
million immigrants every year, there is room for that many 
babies; and if this is the place for the half a million to live, it 
would seem they had rather be born here, and that it would 
be a distinct advantage to the country to have them thus born, 
unless there is something in the soil and surroundings of 
America that spoil the babies, so that we must maintain breed¬ 
ing-ground els where, but this at least had not been true up 
to the time of which we write; if it came to be true all at once, 
it would be a question of the reason why. 

Again, how did the idea, the knowledge and practice of self¬ 
abuse at once become general among the young of both $exes. 
Perhaps this is the most difficult to account for. It could not 
have been publicly advertised, for no one makes a profit out of 
it, as in the case of criminal abortion. The practice is not 


Revolution and Decay of the Native Race in the North. 49 

found in healthy individuals, or in a healthy race of people. 
From observations among the peasant population of Europe 
we know that there are whole provinces of this population 
among which there is not even an inkling of its existence. It 
seems to depend on certain conditions. As it is true that cer¬ 
tain weeds will spring up at once in a soil if a condition is 
brought into existence that favors them, or as certain germs of 
disease at once multiply if they are favored by a suitable con¬ 
dition, so it may be said of this practice; a condition came into 
existence that favored it, and it spread at once among the whole 
population. 

It is still a serious question how this strong race so suddenly 
became enervated and effeminate. How did the notion get 
into their heads that they could not live unless there was a soft 
snap for them somewhere; unless they could do so, practically 
without exertion, at the expense of somebody? 

This latter passage perhaps enables us to trace the beginning 
a step further. It is a universal proverb that idleness and lazi¬ 
ness breed vice and disease. But a thrifty, industrious, frugal 
and modest population does not at once, and without cause, 
become extravagant in its notions, visionary and inclined to 
impractical ideas—deserting the habits of daily toil, of modest 
demands, the content of homely comforts and domestic enjoy¬ 
ments. Doubtless the cause of the change was a transition 
of thought and sentiment; a bringing in of new ideals. 

Up to that time, honest Franklin had been the prophet of 
the nation. His almanac had been in every home. His 
proverbs and terse sayings, like those of a second Solomon, 
inculcating thrift, honesty, modesty, frugal and sober ways, 
had become the proverbs of the nation. The people had lived 
them, and acted them, and had reaped their reward. Franklin’s 
philosophy may not be deep, but it is sound'as far as it pretends. 
It does not pretend to be everything, nor to cover the whole field 
of human endeavor. Nor was this necessary, for it was sup¬ 
plemented by a religious system that took full account of the 
other side of life, the soul, its immortality, and its higher as¬ 
pirations. This religious system was that of the Bible, firmly 
believed in without doubt or question. The Bible and Frank¬ 
lin’s almanac, firmly believed in, is quite sufficient to account 
for the immense strength and vitality of the native American 
race down to the time of the change. The time of the change 


50 Revolution and Decay of the Native Race in the North . 

was a time of transition of thought and sentiment, of bringing- 
in of new ideals. Franklin and the Bible were superseded by 
new prophets. We have the era of brilliant literary achieve¬ 
ments; the era of transcendentalism. We yet admire the 
brilliancy, but, nevertheless, these prophets were practically 
one and all prophets of decadence. The period of decadence 
started from them and with them, it started from their locality 
and amongst them, that is—New England. Their writings 
are throughout permeated with the poison that undermined 
the faith and ideals that up to that time had preserved the 
race strong and vigorous. 

With the undermining of the fundamentals in morals and 
religion we have all sorts of vagaries introduced in their place. 
We have the political woman and the shriveled-up family, mis¬ 
shapen notions and perverted sentiment, extravagant conceit 
and visionary ideas. 

Emerson had said “hitch your wagon behind a star.’’ This, 
and like alluring bombast, was taken as good advice with amaz¬ 
ing unanimity; and the result is that Americans are mostly 
among the stars, literally and figuratively, while the foreigners, 
content with humbler and more rational means of progress, are 
taking possession of the earth. A sentiment exaggerated, 
something like a gambling-fever, or “Wall-street craze,” took 
possesion of the nation. Parents began to look upon their 
children as prodigies destined for careers. Honest toil and a 
reasonable ambition was discounted. The road “from the log 
cabin to to the White House” became thronged with aspirants ; 
few succeeded, the many became tramps and vagabonds, and 
were swallowed up by vice and crime. The people of a nation 
can not live altogether by stealing from one another; the great 
majority must be producers. If those of the native race refuse 
to be such, they naturally dwindle to a small minority. Crazy 
ideals brought them nearly to this, but doubtless the presence 
of the foreigners helped to create and confirm in them the no¬ 
tions that it was no longer for them to work. Unwilling to 
exert themselves for the support of life, they soon found it 
necessary to go a step further and exert themselves against the 
life that craved exertion for its support. Hence, the introduc¬ 
tion of all the vices and weaknesses that lead to deterioration 
and extinction. 

To one who sees the condition of to-day with its exclusive 


Revolution and Decay of the Native Race in the North. 51 

demand for foreign labor it is hard to realize that only sixty 
or fifty years ago it did not exist. The native American boys- 
supplied every demand, and with a rate of increase of popula¬ 
tion greater than to-day. This increase was almost wholly due 
to native reproduction. A light immigration of kindred peo¬ 
ple, at once assimilated and absorbed, existed. The American 
boys were at .that time practically a drug in the market, cheap 
and plenty, equal to any task. The women and girls were 
like them, independent in their perfect ability to meet any de¬ 
mand on their strength and endurance. Dependence on an¬ 
other race for physical strength, wherever needed, is an abnor¬ 
mal condition; a race thus dependent is already lost. There 
was no dependence of this sort at the beginning of this period; 
displacement of Americans was a forced process, due to the 
incoming of vast numbers of an alien race. But as degeneracy 
crept in, caused in part by the presence of these latter, in part 
by wrong ideals and consequent loss of power, dependence and 
displacement became voluntary; the race, so to speak, went out 
of business. 

The resistance of Americans to their forced displacement 
at the beginning of this period, and its failure, constitute the 
most important chapter and turning-point in the history of the 
country. Change in the form of government is a small matter 
compared with displacement of a race and subversion of a civi¬ 
lization. The native American boys seem to have known by 
instinct what was coming. They made resistance of a desul¬ 
tory and haphazard sort. It was called “know-nothingism,” and 
it is true, they did not know it all; if they had, they would have 
become desperately in earnest, perhaps sufficiently so to pro¬ 
duce results. The capitalists were in the saddle, in the North 
as in the South; the race was sacrificed. A few years sufficed 
to sweep them from the workshops of the country and place 
these in the hands of foreigners, a victory to them equal to the 
capture of several States. 

The farms remained, and should have been the stronghold 
of the race, from whence it might have recruited its forces. 
But political and economic defeat had produced its demoraliz¬ 
ing effect; and demoralization had spread among the farmers 
as rapidly as in the towns. Boys were no longer plenty. For¬ 
eigners had to be hired to work the farms. They were first 
the hired men; now are they tenants; they will in time be- 
owners. 


52 Revolution and Decay of the Native Race in the North . 

We often hear of the deserted farms in New England and 
the East, and we say accommodatingly that the boys have left 
the farms and gone to the city. But the boys are not in the 
cities, the foreigners got them. Had the population continued 
strong and vigorous, there would have been boys enough to 
fill the cities fuller than they now are with foreigners, and to 
occupy the farms as well. What is not true of the boys which 
were not is true of the farmers insufficiently provided with 
them. West as well as East they have flocked to the towns 
almost en masse, where they live idle, useless lives on a small 
income from their rented farms. 

Vain notions and love of ease doubtless increase the rush 
to the towns; but scarcity of children is the sufficient and effi¬ 
cient cause. The woman may be either entirely unwilling or 
utterly unfit to have them. The man may have started on the 
farm with a love for it, and some ambition to go on with it and 
make it a success. The absence of children soon makes this 
extremely burdensome and almost impracticable. They are 
of the highest importance to him, not only for sentimental 
reasons, but from a financial point of view. Hired labor comes 
high and is unreliable. It costs practically nothing to bring 
up children on the farm; properly trained they will pay for 
their keep many times over. Overworked, lonely, and seeing 
no use of his toil, none to work for, he soon consents to his 
wife’s proposal to move to town. The foreigner gets the farm. 
On some avenue in town we may find 3 lonely couple living 
their idle, selfish life. We may find the country towns more 
than half filled with them. 

The native farmer labors under still another disadvantage. 
If his importunity prevails with the woman to have children, 
girls are generally the result with discouraging persistency. 
Much speculation has been indulged in with regard to the de¬ 
termination of sex. Observation confirms the perhaps not 
original notion that the stronger party determines the opposite 
sex. Where there is a fair balance the children are about 
evenly divided between the sexes. Here we have abnormal 
inequalities, and among the natives, nearly always in favor of 
girl babies. The women being weakened by abusive practices, 
the men the stronger, girls are the result. 

In a Western community, mostly farmers, the native con¬ 
tingent from many States, so great was the preponderance of 


Revolution and Decay of the Native Race in the North. 53 

kgirls among them that although a good half of those that mar¬ 
ried were supplied with husbands from among the foreigners, 
yet, even so, it failed to suffice for the inequality, and quite a 
few remained unmarried. 

But here, again, we notice a disadvantage to our race and 
kindreds among the immigrants. These marriages of robust 
foreigners to frail, nervous, slender girls, were not as a rule 
productive of results, which meant a loss to the race of these 
men who with proper mates would have brought up families 
of happy, healthy children, illustrations of a principle called 
attention to at the beginning of this chapter. 

The American boys, being a minority from the start, chances 
appear to be against them from the start, which emphasizes 
the inequality referred to at the critical time of life. Girls, 
although frail, have more tenacity of life; often the only baby- 
boy would die, while the girls would hold on. If the boys 
survive infancy, the chances are still against them. Being 
taught to act smart, and to some degree reckless, they are pecu¬ 
liarly liable to accident. Surviving childhood, early youth 
finds them quarreling about the girls, killing each other or 
themselves on this account. Further on, being brought up 
without moral training and habits of self-restraint, they fall 
easy victims to vice in all its forms, and evil habits get away 
with numbers of them. Having furthermore instilled into 
them from early infancy a detestation for small things, and 
the common walks of life, for which perhaps alone there is fit¬ 
ness, and fired with a vaulting ambition, the chance for habits 
of industry and steady, persevering work is against them. 
Schemes involving an opportunity to get a living by one’s wit 
becomes a habitual study, meeting with indifferent success, 
and often ends in trouble. Adventures of all kinds and any¬ 
thing promising excitement, and a riddance of work, is always 
a welcome occasion. War is such an occasion, and he is always 
on hand to enlist. 

The American boys that are able to run the gauntlet of all the 
dangers that surround them from infancy, and whose ambition 
is equaled by abilities, make up the strong men and geniuses 
of the country. Their careers are marked and the stories of 
their successes often told. But a few millionaires and men of 
genius are not a nation. They serve the masses, howmuch- 
soever they may gain for themselves. Even the slaveholders, 


54 Revolution and Decay of the Native Race in the North. 

selfish and hard taskmasters as they were, served the Negro 
race; except for them the Negroes would not now own a popu¬ 
lation in the country equal to that of several States. So with 
the American strong man and genius of today; their talent and 
leadership is at the service of the foreigners which compose 
the masses. They pave the way for them and deliver the coun¬ 
try over to them. They may accumulate the wealth and hold 
the high position. The ownership of this, held at the mercy 
of the masses, is nominal and when the masses are aliens in 
race and creed it is a precarious possession. The genius of 
American leadership can never take back from these foreigners 
the immense service rendered them, or the country delivered 
over to them, but the foreigners may at any time they choose 
take away both wealth and leadership. The country will be¬ 
long to the population thereof; bulk, numbers and physical- 
strength will determine ultimate ownership. 


NOTES AND REVIEW. 


It is human nature to get away from a humiliating admission 
if possible. The weakness might be indulged if less were at 
stake, but the race itself is at stake, and it would be worth 
the while for the sake of it to face ourselves and the situation. 
Something could be saved, even from the wreckage, by a fair 
understanding of the causes and proper efforts. 

In getting away from a humiliating admission we seek the 
first convenient loophole. A woman writer finds one in the 
greater passions of Southern people, accounting for their 
greater increase and present heavy movement towards the 
North. The notion comes in conflict with an hitherto accepted 
theory, that gives Northern people the credit for strength, 
vitality and whatever would tend to predominance. Both 
theories may be equally worthless. 

The facts of history are a more serious matter, and it is 
inexcusable in any theorist, man or woman, to be ignorant of 
them. Who does not know of the mighty migrations of 
northern people southward, within historic times, both from 
Europe and Asia; how swarm after swarm of the former swept 
down over Europe, and established themselves from Great 
Britain down into Africa; of the latter likewise carving out 
for themselves kingdoms from Hungary in Europe, to India 
and China in Asia! How has the process come to be reversed ? 
It is evidently accounted for by the general fact that corruption, 
effeminacy and disintegration follow in the wake of the highest 
civilization. In former times, civilization was furthest ad¬ 
vanced in southern countries, and with it followed the seed 
of corruption, decay and disintegration, inviting to conquest 
by northern people. In our day, this is reversed; we have the 
highest civilization in the North, and we have also the vices 
of civilization and disintegration making room for influx of 
southern races. 

But has not the world advanced these last fifteen hundred 
years? What about the great forces of modern civilization— 
religion, science and education, with its mighty auxiliary, the 
printing-press? So far from these having proved a bulwark 
against the disintegrating forces, they have afforded facilities 

- 55 ) 



56 


Notes and Review. 


for their rapid advance. In the old time, corruption started 
with a wealthy, luxurious class in the cities, and crept slowly 
beyond to outlying circles, and there is no reason to suppose 
it ever reached the outermost. In our days it is different; with 
the help afforded by modern facilities, it sweeps at once over 
a whole population. 

The rapid decrease of immigration from northern Europe 
suggests the question of the presence of the plague among the 
people of our own race in the home lands. There are difficul¬ 
ties in obtaining reliable data. Inquiries with reference to an 
unpopular subject are apt to be met at first with assumed in¬ 
difference, to be followed, perhaps, by violent expressions of 
feeling, as though all was lost, the one as much a dodge as 
the other. A certain class of influential Englishmen are ad¬ 
dicted to this latter, shrieking out exaggerations and sweeping 
generalizations, with the evident intent to startle. This is too 
reassuring; everybody perceives the trick and discounts the 
whole, even the truth that is in it is for the time being over¬ 
looked. Let us have an investigation of the precise facts in 
the case, with thorough understanding of causes and sug¬ 
gestion of remedies. 

To say that the condition in northern Europe approaches 
that of x\merica is a wild assertion. There is as yet but a 
slight comparison. But we know with what a rush this con¬ 
dition, when once started, may pass over a population. The 
question is: Is there more there than here to bar its progress ? 
There are stricter laws, a more watchful government, and more 
fear of God undoubtedly. Liberalism, however, is at work 
and may undermine all of these. Their only hope, perhaps, is 
to consent to learn from our experience, and take measures 
that will check progress. A principal danger is from injurious 
fashions. The breaking down of distinctions between the 
classes in this respect lays the whole population open to attack 
from this side. They will doubtless not proceed so far as we 
before passing immigration laws that will effectually bar other 
races from taking advantage of any national weakness. 

A sharp decrease of the birth-rate in Australia has of late 
attracted attention. A slight decrease is not under some 
circumstances alarming, but here we have a sudden and con¬ 
siderable decrease which, taken in connection with the advent 


Notes and Reviezv. 


57 


and prominence of the political woman, leaves no doubt of the 
presence of the plague. And we may look for some other race 
to find its way to those regions and take the place of the present 
population. 

We hear also whining, on the part of some Englishmen, on 
account of the Dutch, with their large families, getting ahead 
of the English in Africa. Here, there is no damage. The 
Boers are better Anglo-Saxons than the English. They were 
Anglo-Saxons before there were any Englishmen. They are 
better Anglo-Saxons because truer to Anglo-Saxon principles. 

We may think lightly of the brag and boast of Anglo-Saxon- 
ism, especially the narrow sort, but we should not think lightly 
of the race itself, or its future existence. “Saxons, Normans 
and Danes are we” from the shores of the Baltic and the North 
Sea; the race emerges into history at the decline of the Roman 
Empire, and was used to chastise effeminacy and corruption 
in southern nations. For some centuries after, it simply occu¬ 
pied its place in northern Europe. Then there is another 
world-crisis. Tyranny and oppression, by priest and king, has 
reached the utmost limit of endurance, the race makes a stand 
for freedom of thought and liberty of will; one hundred years 
of wars and persecution follows, in which the race is often 
nearly crushed, but at the end saves itself, and a portion of the 
world for its principles. The fight is still on; nine-tenths of 
mankind acknowledge the authority of the autocratic priest or 
king. Its work and mission is not, therefore, ended. There 
is no other race that can take its place; there are plenty that 
can take its ground and occupy it. 


THE ANGLO-SAXON RACE IN THE SOUTH WITH 
REFERENCES TO THE CONDITION IN 
THE NORTH. 


In a former discussion of this subject, it was pointed out 
how newspapers of the South helped to solve the race question 
by advertising means and medicine for killing off the white 
babies before they are born. If we seek for evidence of the 
plague in the South, we do not need go further. There are 
other symptoms of this disease, and very ugly ones, but there 
are none more aggravating and decisive in their character. 
When parents and doctors conspire to kill off the race in this 
wholesale fashion, and first-class public newspapers openly 
advertise the means of destruction, we have reached a level 
from which it is not possible to descend lower. 

These advertisements do not pay unless the means advertised 
are used. Perhaps they are paid for at extra rates ; anyhow, 
these means must be used extensively and steadily to pay for 
a standing advertisement. And they are standing the year 
round, and have been for a great many years. The particular 
one referred to in a former chapter was going the round of 
papers in the North shortly after the Civil War, and possibly 
before that time. The wording of it has not been changed 
through all these years, while it has been on its errand of death 
and destruction, unchallenged by the authorities and public 
opinion. It tells what the medicine will do quite plainly. 
There are others more disguised, but silly women have evi¬ 
dently no difficulty in making out their meaning, for unless 
they were understood and the means used, how could the 
advertising pay? It is the intelligent editor alone that ap¬ 
parently is ignorant of their meaning. 

We have learned not to expect much of our government 
along lines unconnected with party or boodle, but it would 
seem that this public bidding for the privilege of murder could 
be made to cease. America is the only country where these 
things could be. Foreign nations have an eye to business, at 
any rate if nothing more. It would be inconvenient to say 
the least, for a king or pope to wake up some morning and find 

(58 



The Anglo-Saxon Race South—Condition in the North. 59 

himself without any people to govern; so they do not take any 
chances with these things; they strike at once and hard. Here 
we need not be particular, for the rake-off of all the world is 
on hand to take our place if we wish to go out of business. 

There are others. The alluring pictures of the wasp-waisted 
woman are hardly less damaging. There is much besides to 
prevent undue optimism with regard to human nature. In¬ 
firmities and weaknesses do not surprise. But these particular 
advertisements under discussion have a character that make 
them more or less of a puzzle. They impress one with an 
import not only moral, but scientific. They are psychologically 
significant, and should be investigated from this point of view. 
We can understand an enemy sneaking through the lines and 
poisoning the wells of an adversary, though this would not 
be considered civilized warfare even on the part of an enemy. 
Something may be said about the impersonality of the press, 
but this is not convincing. It is not all done by machinery. 
There are hearts and brains behind it somewhere. It would 
be an impertinence to tell representative men that they have 
an interest in their race and country beyond the value of an ad. 
or two. A race of people can not live with nothing but disease 
and selfishness to show for its existence; it will stand some of 
this, but there is a limit. It has come to be a plain question 
whether the leading forces of our civilization and representa¬ 
tive men of our race, will help save rather than destroy. If 
they do not, then the Anglo-Saxon race, with its pride and 
boast, goes down; and the Negro, the Jew, and the Italian 
takes its place. 

It could not be expected that the invisible Mason-Dixon 
line should present an effectual barrier to the progress of the 
plague southward; and it has not. It was general in the North 
before it gained much of a foothold in the South; but at present, 
like any other plague, we may trace its advance along lines 
of communication and travel. The territory that is not 
touched by these is exempt; what is along these lines is af¬ 
fected. The advertisements referred to have been found in 
papers published near the gulf. But other signs of the disease 
are not lacking. 

In the cities, and to some extent elsewhere, we meet with 
women of the type with which we have become familiar in 
.the North: the married woman who at the age of thirty is a 


60 The Anglo-Sctxon Race South—Condition in the North . 

flat-chested, bloodless, nerveless, physical wreck, stamped with' 
all the evil practices of her generation. 

The married woman has her prototype in the girls found in 
increasing numbers. The wasp-waisted shape is in evidence,, 
with lines of beauty crushed out by the steel cage, and well- 
filled outlines reduced to a handful of-—disease; a mere handful, 
where nature evidently intended an armful of healthy flesh and 
blood. 

In some of the inland parts of the South one may see more 
beautiful and well-developed women any day than could be 
found in some other parts of the country by hunting for them 
a whole year. But even here it is only a question of contact 
with those other parts. The fashions of to-day are rather more 
injurious and outrageous than ever; a body subjected to them 
is inevitably ruined. The fact that they are the fashion means 
that they prevail as such among the mass of women, other¬ 
wise they could not be the fashion. Reformers may save a 
few, but as long as they have not succeeded in overthrowing 
the injurious fashions, they do not succeed in saving the vast 
majority. In our days a device has come into use which ruins 
the young girls before ever they have had time to put on the 
corset. 

An observer is led to wonder what ails these girls in those 
inland parts of the South spoken of. Having had healthy 
parents, they grow and develop splendidly up to a certain time, 
the time of approaching womanhood, when suddenly every¬ 
thing changes. Their complexions, which before rivaled that 
of our immigrants from Northern Europe, become pasty and 
unhealthy; their growth ceases. At the very time when a girl, 
under normal conditions, develops with wonderful rapidity, 
they suddenly cease growing and take on a sickly, stunted 
appearance. Why all at once this shriveled-up look about 
these girls? Had it been a boy, we should say the cigarette 
habit. Had they been of less healthy stock, we should believe 
it to be self-abuse. But it is neither ; it is the belt—so handy, 
and so easily manipulated. Many of these thirteen to fifteen- 
year-old girls have indeed already on the corset, but the belt 
is sufficient. 

The girls have approached the age of womanhood and the 
impulse of attracting the eyes of the young men seizes upon 
them. With all the ardor supplied by this impulse, they make 


The Anglo-Saxon Race South—Condition in the North. 6 r 

it cut into the soft parts of the body, displacing the vital or¬ 
gans, obstructing circulation, and hindering every vital process. 
Fashion teaches them that that is the way to show themselves 
women, and their idea is to catch the eyes of the young men. 
No man, knowing what it will mean, can look at the mis¬ 
shapen body without horror. 

When an anemic girl from the plague-stricken sections 
makes use of one of these devices and squeezes out of her the 
little life left, there is not much cause for regret; she would 
not have amounted to anything. But these girls had it in 
them to make beautiful and strong women simply by allowing 
nature her own way of development. They are ruined before 
they reach the age of womanhood. 

Some sympathy might be due a race of people tired of the 
struggle of‘existence, and wishing to retire; but nothing can 
be said in sympathy with this gratuitous folly which prolongs 
and clings to life after health, strength and usefulness have 
been wantonly sacrificed; which enormously increases the pains 
and dangers of childbirth and fills the land with the puny r 
sickly and useless, and has not even the compensation of vicious 
pleasure, but unfits even for this. 

Of what use is civilization, science, knowledge, education, 
when with all these we are unable to correct abuses that would 
shame a South Sea cannibal, and are literally destroying the 
race. 

Moral deficiencies may cause failures, but this wholesale 
destruction of physical power is certain and inevitable ruin; it 
is useless to appeal to those that are utterly unfit for anything. 

A race to live must produce life, and be capable of it; 
if not, it very naturally dies. 

In the past of the world’s history, it does not appear that 
there has been need of anxiety, on the part of leading men, 
with regard to the “raw material” on which all depended. The 
king might count with confidence on people to be taxed; the 
general was certain of “food for powder,” the priest assured 
that the procession would be kept up of those that would crawl 
in abject terror before him; the scientist and philosopher could 
speculate and plan for the future of a race, without any ques¬ 
tion about its continuance. Even to-day, it seems absurd to 
call the attention of leading men from their great thoughts 
and great works to a bit of feminine* vanity as capable of 


*62 The Anglo-Saxon Race South—Condition in the North. 

making their planning for the future of their race quite super¬ 
fluous. 

As a builder taking too much for granted about the founda¬ 
tion, going on complacently with the superstructure, so our 
representative men, ceaselessly scheming for the future of our 
race, and busying themselves with the superstructure, have 
taken too much for granted. They multiply institutions of 
learning not needed, build magnificent churches for a score 
of dying families, and exult in the splendor and progress of 
their civilization. Their ambition and plans for the future 
of their race outstrips even fancy, and finds hardly room on 
the globe; then some day when the race is actually wanted, and 
we look around for it, it is not there, it is gone. Like a sub¬ 
merged continent it has disappeared; in its place is a sea of for¬ 
eigners, only here and there islets jotting up out of the sea of 
the continent that once was. We have arrived at this in the 
North and are preparing for the same in the South. 

In making calculations and predictions about the future of 
a race, there is no better method than that of studying the 
growing girls and young women. Observe their ways, and 
notice what they make of themselves. It is ahead of statistics 
of churches and learned institutions, of commercial enterprise, 
export and import, army and navy. If the women of our alien 
races, which are here in force, Celt, Slav, Latin, South German, 
French Canadians, Jew and Negro are ahead of the Anglo- 
Saxon in robustness, health and bodily capacity, as well as in 
domestic affection and home-making qualities, we need not 
enquire further about the relative importance of those races 
in the future. 

A noted Southern lecturer, not long ago, delivered the usual 
characteristic lecture throughout the South, about the Anglo- 
Saxon race, its backbone, etc. They are at work down in the 
South precisely along the same lines as in the North. They 
will rave and brag and bluster about their Anglo-Saxon race, 
while the race is falling to pieces about them, and never do a 
single practical thing to save it. Their nature is to strive 
against a humiliating admission as long as possible. And 
appearances help them to some extent; the grown-up people 
keep alive even when the younger generation dwindle and grow 
sickly. There are some left of the native American race in the 
North; a million of them are on the government’s pension-list, 


The Anglo-Saxon Race South—Condition in the North. 63 

and a few millions more might be on the superannuated list, 
for all their interest in the future of their race—elderly and 
old people, old maids or hopelessly unattractive girls, married 
people without children, sickly children and blasted youth of 
both sexes, utterly unfit to reproduce themselves; a lot of 
wreckage, drifting down the stream of time finally to disap¬ 
pear, but while present helping to keep up appearances. If 
anything is to be done, it should not deter us that there is 
something left of the race; it would be an advantage to begin 
before it is all gone. 

It is a conflict between races in the United States 
and elsewhere, sure enough. The power to produce life 
and support it is the only weapon. For the Anglo-Saxon 
race to enter this contest with nothing better than the 
wasp-waisted women, than the ruined product of fashion and 
a perverted sentiment, is like contending without arms and 
ammunition against a well-ecpiipped force. 

It is a serious question about the remaining stronghold of 
the native American race—the mountain regions of the South. 
Whether to leave them in their ignorance and simplicity, and 
have them remain strong, or impart to them the light and 
knowledge of our “higher civilization” and have them follow 
the rest of the race to its grave. As it is* there is no question 
about the result. Degeneracy, decay and extinction has fol¬ 
lowed in the wake of this civilization precisely to the extent 
it has been introduced. Knowledge has been used for im¬ 
moral puiposes as fast as it has been acquired. 

Some people grow hysterical in their predictions as to what 
is in store for the future in view of inventions and science, but 
mankind has it in its power to make all these things minister 
to its vices and selfishness, so that the world of humanity may 
grow worse continuously with the increase of knowledge and 
scientific attainments, perhaps to the total extinction of civ¬ 
ilized races. The people in the mountainous regions of the 
South have been preserved in their seclusion simply because, 
civilization, science, knowledge and education have not been 
able to get at them. That is the one reason why they have 
retained their original strength and vigor. 

There is no need of discounting the evils of ignorance in the 
presence of a greater. It is sad to see a people with no wider 
horizon than their own immediate neighborhood, and no 


64 The Anglo-Saxon Race South—Condition in the North . 

greater interests than local feuds and broils; it is sadder still 
to see the remaining stronghold of our race in the hands of 
the enemy. It is a question of keeping them secluded and alive 
or let them “eat of the tree of knowledge” and “die.” 

Sometimes we may discover how to combine a higher civili¬ 
zation, education and whatever belongs to it, with strength, 
health, growth, virtue, vitality, but that is a problem which 
we in this country, at any rate, have not solved. We have to 
reckon with our higher civilization such as it is, and we find 
it a blast of death and destruction, its influence as such to be 
traced into every nook and corner where it has penetrated. 
Where its influence has not been felt we find life, growth and 
vitality; and its deadly effect wherever it has reached. It is 
some knowledge in particular, and also knowledge in general, 
that gives potency and life to the foul seed carried along by 
our civilization, and that scatters it like a wind in every di¬ 
rection. 

The verdict would be that these people be let alone till we 
are prepared to give them an education and civilization that 
will not kill them off by the wholesale. They can stand “moon¬ 
shine” whiskey, unsanitary conditions, the revolver and bloody 
feuds; they can stand all this and still increase rapidly, but 
once get among them the ideal of the wasp-waisted woman and 
its advertisers, the ideal of the lazy, idle woman and her crimes, 
and there is an end to life and growth. A few years will suffice 
to supply the whole region with a sickly, straggling population, 
which the foreigners will sweep down and out as soon as they 
come among them, and they will come as soon as weakness in 
the natives invites to easy conquest, as in the rest of the 
country. 


THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO. 


There are several things with regard to the Negro which 
may, or may not, be considered problems. 

The fact of some crime in a population of ten million 
Negroes is not a problem. If crimes and criminals should be¬ 
come so numerous as to disturb the natural order of things, 
cause general apprehension and uneasiness, we have a problem 
justifying special attention. The crime of murder among the 
whites, due to the custom of carrying a revolver, has propor¬ 
tions that constitute it a problem. If the Negro should become 
generally feared and hated on account of his crimes, the de¬ 
mand for his labor and necessary presence would cease, a 
separation could be looked for, each race withdrawing into 
distinct localities. It is not apparent that such a movement 
has, as yet, taken definite shape. 

With regard to the political question, we may admit that 
expedients, not justifiable on general principles, are excusable 
under some circumstances. But this- should evidently not be 
regarded as a solution of the problem. Not till all the require¬ 
ments of justice have been met can we be said to have arrived 
at a satisfactory solution. If the Negro has all the duties and 
burdens of citizenship, it naturally follows that he should 
have the rights and privileges. To extend to him the rights 
and privileges without danger or damage to the State is the 
problem. The difficulty of it should not excuse us from 
earnestly striving towards this end. And as there is room 
for improvements in many directions, both among blacks and 
whites, the case should not be considered hopeless. 

The question of “social equality’” is an impertinence and 
should not be discussed. Social intercourse becomes a problem 
if society is forced upon us that we do not want. Resenting 
this does not involve the question of equality. It may be supe¬ 
rior or inferior ; comparisons are not called for, it is sufficient 
that we are rid of it. Nor is this a matter for complaint on 
the part of any one. No one has a right to more company 
than that of his own person; if we go beyond this we ask for 
permission, and are dependent on the consent and good will of 
others. We save our self-respect by not intruding where we 
are not wanted. 


( 65 ) 



66 


The South and the Negro. 


If the contention is right that amalgamation is against public 
policy, the ground for social intercourse is naturally restricted. 
Marriage is the focal point around which society moves. It 
is not only a never-ceasing interest, but a never-ceasing busi¬ 
ness, to be attended to as such. Where this relation, with all 
its ramifications, is thought inexpedient, or entirely prohibited, 
there can be little occasion for social intercourse. This may 
be further discouraged on the ground of public morality. 
Where the natural consummation of friendship between fami¬ 
lies or individuals of the two sexes is out of the question, the 
steps that might lead to unlawful desires should undoubtedly 
rather not be taken. But with all this to discount social inter¬ 
course, some ground may yet exist in our common humanity, 
and some interests in common. It is worth the while to dis¬ 
cover common ground for standing and agreement, rather than 
causes for estrangement. The notion of superiority without 
reference to character is not a thing to argue about; it is a mat¬ 
ter of feeling, on account of which no one is better. The ques¬ 
tion from this point of view may be assigned to the limbo of 
absurdities. The extravagance and exaggeration on the sub¬ 
ject could not be wholly due to meaningless prejudice. It 
has a practical cause: fear of the Negro wench as a competitor 
to the white woman. The Southerners have often large fami¬ 
lies of boys and girls; mating and marrying is an important 
matter. The boys must be saved for the girls. And it is a 
subject to enlist the feeling. 

The Negro wench as a competitor to the white woman is 
undoubtedly a point in the question between the two races. 
The white woman should not depend too much on the mere 
fact of her being white; a white woman may be anything but 
attractive. If the white woman should become the degenerate 
type, sickly, sallow-faced, bloodless, nerveless wreck of hu¬ 
manity, the fact of her being white would not save her. 
If the Negro wench should come to possess greater attractions, 
she would probably attract in spite of all interdictions. The 
white woman will do well to depend on merit rather than 
prejudice, and strive for the one rather than put her trust in 
the other. 

In the question of amalgamation of the two races, we have 
as a factor working in favor of it the predilection of the Negro 
woman for the white man, unfortunately, not strongly resented 


The South and the Negro. 


67- 

by the Negro. It is in a good degree offset by the ambition: 
of the full-blooded Negro to mate with the half-breeds, caus¬ 
ing a continual absorption of the white blood by the Negro 
race. 

The vitality, strength and rapid increase exhibited at pres¬ 
ent by the Negroes is final as a preventive of any serious ap¬ 
prehension about their continuance as a distinct race. 

Every little while we have the Negro discussed in the North,, 
in a sinister light, with predictions about his dying. It is a 
peculiarity about these people to be concerned about all other 
races except their own. They are discussing the Negro. They 
have endless investigations about the condition of the French 
people. Those of alien races that come over to take their 
places are objects of deep solicitude, conditions are investi¬ 
gated, good or bad habits considered; they will even risk life 
and limb in their pious zeal to regulate them and keep them 
from harm. All this while the tattered remnants of their own 
race are shrinking into ever-narrowing quarters, and no at¬ 
tention paid to it. There is not much ground for concern 
about the Negro race, it has doubled its numbers the last 
forty years, and shows no sign of weakening. Doubtless, there 
are plenty of irregularities among the Negroes, but it takes 
more than this to kill a race. Doubtless, too, the Negroes do* 
ape the vices and fashions of the whites, but they are in this as 
in other things, rather good-natured about it. They think too* 
much of their physical comfort to suffer severely on this ac¬ 
count. It takes the white girl for the dead-earnestness that 
kills soul and body, and endures lifelong tortures for the sake 
of a fashion. 

It can scarcely be said to be considered a problem in the 
South how to get along with the Negro, so as to retain the 
friendship of his race. Up to the time of the war it was easy,, 
for the Negro was “good”; but then it was not so much to his 
credit. Even the whites might be good if they had somebody 
standing over them with a whip all the time, making them be. 
It has become a problem to make blacks and whites good at 
their own initiative; and it might well be treated as a problem 
how to retain the friendship of the Negro. The Anglo-Saxon 
race has shown its capacity for rapid disintegration, and should 
not make enemies lightly. Coddling and sentimentality majr 
be dispensed with, but justice and fairness can not be too seri- 


68 


The South and the Negro. 


ously considered. No race is made better by being abused or 
unjustly dealt with, and it is not easily forgiven. In some of 
the States they are counting the money; they are trying their 
hands at the old bargain, thinking they must pilfer a little at 
the expense of justice in some way, although their settlement 
with justice the last time was a heavy one. One State is gloat¬ 
ing over two or three hundred thousand, received from the 
sale of convict labor. Justice often fails in the case of the 
Negro because the punishment is overdone; it generally fails 
in the case of the whites, because it is not done at all. Much 
of the abuse is wholly gratuitous—the expression of unre¬ 
strained ill-will and prejudice. Many, even of influential peo¬ 
ple, seem .to conceive of it as a grand achievement if they can 
inspire the black race with a deadly hate for the whites. That 
they have not succeeded already is wholly to the credit of the 
Negro; no other race would have been so patient. Succeed in 
imbittering against them a race with a million strong right 
arms, capable of carrying weapons, and of doubling their num¬ 
bers within a reasonable time. 

It is too late to insist that this is an Anglo-Saxon nation 
when it is overrun by alien races, and it is too late to cry out 
that this is a white man’s country, when it is filled with a 
black population. These things should have been thought of 
in the beginning rather than at the end. Alien races once ad¬ 
mitted into this country, Negroes and others, must be allowed 
their natural rights and equal privileges. The right of those of 
the native race remains, to contest the ground with them, and 
retain what they can for themselves. It is not a very precious 
privilege, when it is considered that the ground, all of it, be¬ 
longed to them in the first place, and they might have kept it. 
But it has become a necessity. The Anglo-Saxons can not es¬ 
cape the contest, except by getting off the ground altogether. 
They have no choice but to assert themselves or go under. We 
Tave imposed this contest on ourselves, North as well as South, 
we and our fathers, by our greedy desire to profit by cheap, 
alien labor; not cheap, for we are paying for it by giving 
them the country, more or less, or all of it. 

Carlyle, in one of his books, takes to cursing of his ancestry, 
and somebody else’s ancestry. The indulgence might be justi¬ 
fied, if some sentiment should suffer no great harm, seeing, as 
a people, we are long on sentiment and short on principles. 


6 9 


The South and the Negro. 

But it would not remedy matters; there would still be left for 
us this combat, to be fought by legitimate means, which alone 
will count. Keep strong, healthy and virtuous, so as to increase 
our numbers, and make us able, by cheap and efficient labor, to 
compete with our competitors, which should not be hard in 
the case of the Negro, if what is said about his inefficiency is 
true. It is understood that the Southerners in some parts of 
the South are making an effort to save the cotton factories 
for their own race. It is right and honorable tactics, and 
valuable ground, unless the factories be used to kill the chil¬ 
dren and ruin the young girls. In this case the Negroes have 
the advantage without them. 

Small farms are especially to be recommended to the native 
whites. One big plantation means one white family of super¬ 
fluous wealth, and a hundred servile dependents, Negroes or 
some alien race. Neither the owner nor the dependents are com¬ 
patible with a civilization founded on the principles of liberty 
and progress. The same plantation cut up into twenty farms 
would give a chance for twenty native white families, which, 
if they are healthy and virtuous, would have boys enough to 
work them without help from any. alien race; and not alone 
this, but enough to fill the cities as well. 

Too generally the idea of “white supremacy” in the South 
means still what it meant before the war, the supremacy of a 
few white capitalists, proud and domineering, be the rest of 
the population what it may. The idea is as harmful to a 
worthy white population as to a worthy colored population, 
and till its representatives are eliminated we can not have 
either. 

Barring this idea of centering the interests at stake in a few, 
we have a contest for supremacy in which numbers alone count 
and whatever makes for numbers. If the capitalists are con¬ 
cerned about any other kind of supremacy than their own, they 
have abundant chance to prove it. If the Anglo-Saxon race 
will save itself, it must occupy a great deal of common ground, 
farms, factories, mines, etc., whatever makes for numbers. 
Unlawful efforts at suppression of the natural aspirations of 
the Negro race should give place to efforts to meet his com¬ 
petition on this common ground of manual labor. We can not 
have more people than we have ground for them to occupy. As 
far as we surrender ground, we surrender our race and country. 


yo 


The South and the Negro. 


The native Americans of the North thought it pleasant to> 
have the foreigners come into the country and do the work for 
them, forgetting that in doing it they must occupy the ground. 
So they turned over to them the ground in wholesale lots,, 
workshops and trades, factories and mines, farms and fields,, 
chances and opportunities; practically reserving no ground for 
their own race. As a consequence, they have dwindled till 
they do not need any. 

What remains of them have taken the air, and their ex¬ 
ploitations and ebullitions are curious enough; all they ask for 
now is a chance to fool themselves, and are content while this 
is left them. There is no hope of betterment till they come to 
a level where they can take account of themselves and the sit¬ 
uation. 

Some stronger race may crowd the life out of the Negro by 
crowding him off the ground he is occupying; but at present it 
is not apparent that he will help by wholesale destruction of 
himself. He will, therefore, be a tougher job. 

The deportation of the Negro as a practical means of solving 
the race questions in the South has of late been discussed with 
a degree of seriousness that challenges attention. 

Two elements in our population may be said to favor it. 
Unless we mistake the noise of a few for the sentiment of 
many, the Southerners are largely in favor of it; likewise the 
aliens in the North—the Negro is a competitor in the labor 
market. For yet another reason their authorities would de¬ 
sire it; they will either win the Negro or be rid of him. 

As for the practicability of it, if it is parcticable, as it is, to 
import one million people to this country in one year, it is 
practicable to export one million people out of it, and at this 
rate, the Negroes could be got rid of. As for steamships to 
carry them out, we could stop immigration for a term of years, 
which would set the steamships free for the job, and they would 
be glad to take it. But this is not really necessary, for if the 
Negroes are deported, some will be wanted from abroad to 
take their place. Those available are the people from southern 
Europe. Steamships exporting the Negroes could stop at 
their ports and take over a cargo of these people, cheapening 
rates by a cargo both ways. In ten years we would have ten 
millions Slavs and Latins in their place, and await develop¬ 
ments. 


The South and the Negro. 


7 1 


But why not adopt the cheaper plan? Why not allow the 
same to be accomplished by the automatic, self-working plan 
that has operated successfully in the North. The Slavs and 
Latins are crowding in there at the rate of upwards of a mil¬ 
lion a year, and getting away with those already there, thus 
making it unnecessary to export them. Why have they not 
already overrun the South as they have the North? Wholly 
on account of the Negro, undoubtedly. But they will get away 
with the Negro as well as with white people when once they get 
the process underway. And they have discovered the process 
and have it already in successful operation. Louisiana is ex¬ 
ulting over the fact of having tipped the balance against the 
Negro. This, has not been done by the native whites; it is 
the incoming Italians, through the port of New Orleans, ad¬ 
vancing into Louisiana and driving the Negroes before them, 
crowding them back as they advance, a grand sight. If it had 
been armies with banners it could not have been done more 
prettily. It reminds us of the ancient Britons, inviting the 
Anglo-Saxons over to help against a disagreeable competitor. 
They came, got away with the competitor very easy, with the 
native race also, and—kept the country for themselves. 

The notion that the Negroes will be eliminated in the strug¬ 
gle, and the native whites left, is a very superficial one. The 
whites have no power of resistance that the blacks have not. 
They will not work for less wages, or take up with harder con¬ 
ditions for the sake of existence. They are not less inclined to 
make anxious calculations about the future, which counts for 
the Negro. When a race of people begins to question about 
chances for self, or possible offspring, its chances amounts to 
little. Their vitality and physical strength is not greater than 
that of the Negro; they are not less liable to disintegration 
by causes from within. The whites have furnished abundant 
proof of what they are capable of in this respect. 

The newcomers will naturally start with the lower ground, 
but that is the ground that counts in the scale of population. 
The native whites should occupy it if they will win. If the 
Negroes have lost the factories and plantations of Louisiana, so 
have the native whites, which, if they are indeed superior to 
the Negroes, could have done what the Italians have done; it 
is a game that may be played by one race as well as by another. 
There is no mystery about this process of displacement of one 


72 


The South and the Negro. 


race by another; it.is the plainest of all propositions. If a 
national and far-sighted policy ruled in the South, the ground 
mentioned would be reserved for the native race at any rate, 
no matter if for the present it meant fewer millionaires. It 
has all along, in this country, been a question between the 
millionaires and our race and civilization. We have accepted 
the former and allowed the destruction of the latter. If the 
expansive power yet in the native race be saved, there is suffi¬ 
cient of it to occupy all the ground as fast as developments 
are desirable; but deprive it of the ground, and it can not ex¬ 
pand. 

The ground of work for wages is that on which the poor 
man and the young men must make their start; take this away 
from a race of people and its chances for life are exceedingly 
circumscribed. 

The ground was thus taken away in the North from the 
native race, and although it was stronger there at that time 
than it is in the South at present, yet a few years sufficed for 
its downfall. 

It is of no purpose to say that here is room for more people. 
Developments will not be unduly forced, if population is thus 
forced by the incoming of immense numbers of aliens, a strug¬ 
gle for life ensues, in which the newcomers win. Unless they 
were able to win they would not come. 

For this reason it does not follow that the population of 
any and all kinds will increase faster with an increase of im¬ 
migration. In the North the increase of population has di¬ 
minished as immigration has been augmented. The increase 
of population is greater in the South without immigration than 
in the North with its immense immigration. As the immi¬ 
grants have expanded their advance in the North, so the na¬ 
tives have contracted in like proportion, or a little faster, to be 
out of their way, either from choice or necessity. The North, 
to figure out a gain from immigration has to count the aliens 
of more value, man for man, than the native Americans they 
have displaced. 

What is true of the increase of population is true of de¬ 
velopments. The South has caught the fever or rapid de¬ 
velopment from the North, and is ready to turn over reserve 
land and resources to an alien population. But we could im¬ 
agine the opposite: a nation jealously guarding reserve land 


The South and the Negro: 


73 


and resources, keeping it for the increase of its own race. In 
turning it over to an alien population, we invite a conflict with 
them for the possession of the whole, in which the outcome 
is not doubtful. 

Natural resources can not be replaced; what is used is taken 
away forever. A nation with a national policy would be par¬ 
ticular about what it gets in return for having it taken. The 
South is developing the natural resources of her forests with 
a rapidity that will insure its destruction in a few years, and 
perhaps the fertility of the country largely. They are fever- 
ously anxious to turn over the rest of their natural resources in 
exchange for a few millionaires and an alien population. 

7he demolition of the American forests over large areas, 
fit alone for their growth, and which, with proper care, could 
have afforded supplies for all the future, furnishes a good ex¬ 
ample of unrestrained greed in this country, that does not 
reckon with the future in its impulse for present gains; as also 
of the lack of national policy that has failed of any control. 
But the forests may pass; there is a deeper meaning to it. In¬ 
dividual greed after the same fashion has served itself in the 
destruction of'the native race, wholly without regard to future 
consequences. In its place, we have in the South the Negro; in 
the North, a more dangerous class of aliens. 

The native race has faults and shortcomings, but it is' not 
tied to a corpse, or moribund system. It may advance; it has 
possibilities denied those races that are thus tied. 

Even with the Negro alone, it is often painful to witness the 
struggle of white young men in the towns for a start. Many 
of them would be excellently fitted for manual labor, but this 
is all done by the Negro. With the newcomers, the native 
white young men in the South will have two competitors in¬ 
stead of one. There is some ground that the native race can 
keep from the Negro, but there is no ground that it can keep 
from the newcomers; they are able to occupy every inch of 
ground that the native white race is occupying, and, moreover, 
they are able to win it. 

If the physiological struggle which will ensue with the incom¬ 
ing of these people should at any time develop into armed con¬ 
flict the Southerners would very soon be able to satisfy them¬ 
selves that the newcomers are “not Negroes.” The shotgun 
policy would not be a one-sided affair. But even in the physi- 


74 


The South and the Negro. 


ological combat there would be a vast difference. The Negroes 
are a disorganized mob, used to look to the whites for example 
and leadership, fairly acknowledging them as masters. This 
would not be the case with these people. There would be sev¬ 
eral nationalities of them, but they would all be united in one 
organization—the strongest there is in the world—and under 
the same leadership, the best the organization can furnish them. 
They would keep together and move in compact mass, in¬ 
spired by the same principle, the same zeal, and the same pur¬ 
pose. 

The Negro does not belong to our race; nevertheless, he is 
not naturally or necessarily an enemy; he belongs to our civili¬ 
zation, having accepted our principles from our teaching and 
example; if we do not appreciate this, the opposition does, 
and if it wins him, will take good care to keep him. The 
Negro is practically all they need for a preponderance of 
physical strength in the country. 

In the coming conflict, when both the native races shall have 
been weakened, the Negro will make his surrender, and fall in 
with the plans of the conquering race. The Negro will be the 
servant and imitator of one race as soon as of another. The 
Anglo-Saxons will have more difficulty in making their sur¬ 
render, and will probably get off the earth. Their talent and 
leadership will be retained, in the South and North alike, till 
the other race and civilization has been fully constructed, when 
it will be got rid of very quickly. 

The whites of the South have burned at the stake and other¬ 
wise tortured some of the Negroes, and the multitude of them 
have evidently enjoyed these proceeding. Their punishment 
may be to have their own children treated in the same 
fashion by these strangers when their countless swarms 
shall cover the South. If the Anglo-Saxon race can enjoy pro¬ 
ceedings along this line, it can not be doubted of these. They 
and their priests are not likely greatly to belie their history, 
when once they have it in their power to repeat it. The Anglo- 
Saxons indulge in these things as a mere expression of race 
prejudice; but these people will have racial and religious 
prejudice both to stimulate them, and the latter has always 
been by far the greatest factor in these proceedings. 

The capitalists are, of all, the least safe as counselors and 
guides. They never look beyond the question of dividends. 


The South and the Negro. 


75 


One punishment overtook the South because of the utter selfish¬ 
ness and shortsightedness of the capitalistic class; a bigger 
storm promises to burst, now looming beyond the horizon. 

In the case of the Negro, we had to wait long for things to 
ripen; the ability of the newcomers to command a yearly rein¬ 
forcement of one million from Europe, will insure us that 
there \vill be no long or tedious waiting for developments. 


IMMIGRATION. 


Three possible effects of immigration may be considered: 

1. Substitution and displacement. 

2. Amalgamation. This may be prevented by too great 
difference in several respects: Difference in race, as in the case 
of the Negro, not a sure preventive; difference in vitality and 
strength—if one race is decidedly weak and sickly, it will ruin 
another race as far as it comes in intimate contact ; difference 
in principles—two civilizations, distinct in principles and ideals 
can not amalgamate; to say so would be a contradiction of 
terms and have no meaning. If there is intermarriage one or 
the other party surrenders; there is a gain on the part of one 
and a loss on the part of the other. 

3. The permanent establishment in the country of various 
people, retaining their racial and national characteristics and 
prejudices. The world presents many such examples. It is a 
common condition in the Orient, the Balkans, in Austria, Ire¬ 
land, Canada, in all of which countries different races have 
lived side by side for centuries, and preserved their identity, 
creeds, characteristics, etc. Contiguity, instead of tending to 
unity, has tended to emphasize differences, prejudices, hostili¬ 
ties, kept in check only by imperial power. We may be said 
to be facing this analogue, but there is a difference due to two 
circumstances. First, in the countries mentioned, there is fixity 
and sameness. The contending races are alike in strength 
and vitality, hardly gaining anything from each other on this 
ground. Neither are helped by immigration, hence the posi¬ 
tion of the various races as to numbers and importance, main¬ 
tained the same through centuries, without marked variation. 
Here it is different. The native race has not shown itself 
equal in strength to the foreigners, and may not even be saved 
as one of the tribes of the country. The alien races are able 
to command reinforcement from abroad to the extent of a half 
or whole million a year, which is overwhelming and decisive 
in any competition. 

Race differences and affinities are not, however, the only 
or most important to be considered. Sympathy of faith and 
sameness of principles counts more than race, language, or any 

( 76 ) 


77 


Immigration. 

other consideration, in producing unity and fixity of purpose. 
In the final analysis it is two distinct civilizations facing each 
other in the United States. The following races, which are 
here in force, are united in sympathy of faith and principle: 
The Slav, Celt, South German, Latin and French Canadian. 
They are able to command from a half to a whole million re¬ 
inforcements from Europe every year, and are strong in vitality 
and reproductive power. 

These amalgamated races, embracing many nationalities, 
represent one civilization, the life and soul of which is the 
Roman church, with its autocrat and its autocratic principles.. 
Opposed to this we have the Anglo-Saxons, with a civilization 
founded on the principles of personal right and liberty. Be¬ 
sides the races mentioned we have the Jew and the Negro. The 
Jews have their own program, but it is not at war with our 
civilization. The Negroes will look out for their own inter¬ 
ests, when they shall have the balance of power as, in the pres¬ 
ent course of events, they will for a while, vote or no vote. 

What is involved is not best described as a question of con¬ 
science. It is a question of supremacy, of power and world¬ 
wide interests, with the autocracy and its supporters. They 
are enforcing the claims of their systems. They may, under 
protest, take less than the whole, but can not be consistent in 
striving for less. The only business of any one’s conscience 
and private judgment is to make them zealous in working for 
the accomplishment of the purpose under direction of authority. 

2. Much blame is attached to the greed of capitalists in this 
country, and it has become a common pastime to abuse them. 
We are good-natured about it, and can afford to be so if money 
alone is involved. Except when it is sent out of the country,, 
nothing is lost; readjustments and redistributions may always 
be brought about. There is another matter not so easily reme¬ 
died. It is the effect of organized capital on the population, 
civilization and destiny of the country. The problem is very 
simple: These organizations may employ half a million work¬ 
men of our race; next year half a million come along from 
southern and central Europe and offer to work for less wages. 
There is at once a shifting of population to this extent. Alien 
races are increasing in this country by immigration and re¬ 
production at the rate of a million a year. They are conquer- 


.78 


Immigration. 


ing territory every year equal to that of a couple of the smaller 
States. That the conquest goes on simultaneously in many 
States does not make their progress any the less certain and 
significant. 

Southern capitalists thought themselves fortunate in being 
able to import Negroes and employ them because they were 
cheap. They did not get them free in wholesale lots of from 
five to eight hundred thousand a year, but had to buy them one 
by one, or in small lots, and finally could not do even this, ex¬ 
cept by stealth. Nevertheless, they found out at last that they 
had enough. They found out that two bodies can not occupy 
the same space; that if you give space for one black or one 
alien, you have just one less of your own race; that you can 
not create a black or alien population in the country, and yet 
have it for a white or native population; as far as one goes in 
the other goes-out. 

The blacks would have full possession of the extreme 
Southern States, if it had been left between them and the 
-capitalists. The Negroes would have done as they did in 
Domingo, Hayti and Jamaica, where they have actual or prac¬ 
tical possession. That they did not get possession of those 
Southern States is wholly due to the fact that a part of the 
•country is unsuited for the operation of the capitalists. It 
was of necessity left to the “poor whites”—the mountain 
regions. The people in their seclusion preserved their original 
vitality, and became recruiting ground for a white population, 
which supplied the physical strength that kept in check the 
Negroes. 

It is hardly thinkable that five or six coal-barons of the Anglo- 
Saxon race can indefinitely keep in submission two hundred 
thousand men that are aliens in race and creed, who hate them 
naturally and inevitably. Nor is it likely that this remnant 
of capitalists in this country can indefinitely rule over an alien 
population that may outnumber them as far as the workmen of 
a factory, mine or any other enterprise outnumber the pro¬ 
prietor or boss. The ground of the Anglo-Saxons that are 
depended on to keep in check the alien population is constantly 
being encroached upon and their power as a controling force 
threatened. 

In the South the Negroes have prevented the expansion of 
the native race to the full extent of their own numbers. The 


Immigration. 


79 


loss to the South of those killed in the war on their account , 
would, up to date, have amounted to five millions more. We 
can not kill off half the young men without permanent damage 
to the race. In the North, we are short forty-five million na¬ 
tive Americans, according to their rate of increase up to the 
beginning of alien immigration. They were overwhelmed in 
the struggle that ensued; their lives were nipped in the bud-, 
they went down in the plague, their last kick was the Civil 
War; it finished them. 

In a country filled to the possibility of support, losses, from 
whatever cause, that do not bring the population below the 
means of subsistence would not be counted. Here, where in 
the world’s economy, w ( as a country that it was our business 
and chance to settle and that otherwise would be settled by 
other races, the above-mentioned account is to our race a dead 
loss, wholly unnecessary, and therefore to be reckoned with. 

The capitalists have a plausible motto: Let all races come 
here and let the best win. The “best” in this scheme of the 
capitalist is the one that will take the least for himself and 
leave the most to the capitalist. The slave and the slaveholder 
is the consummation of this ideal and was realized; but if not . 
that, then the nearest approach to it. It is Tamerlane on the 
top of his pyramid of human bones; it is the capitalist on the 
top of the mass of servility and helpless dependence. The 
race is the “best” that lends itself the more readily to the con¬ 
dition, be it Negro, Chinese, Celt, Slav or Latin. 

The slaveholders, in striving for their ideal, turned the fair¬ 
est and best portion of the South over to a Negro population, 
and ruined their own race to that extent. The capitalists of 
the North, striving for the. same ideal, destroyed their own 
race, and turned the country over to an alien population. In 
its pursuit, race and country are sacrificed as readily as every 
noble consideration. 

There is never any disposition to look far ahead in this 
scramble of greed; for a per cent, more of dividend they will 
sacrifice a race and destroy a civilization, likely to find in the 
end that they have not gained. The Negroes got even with the 
slaveholders to some extent and are yet to be. reckoned with. 
The aliens will get even with the capitalists without outside 
help; there will be done for them what was denied the work¬ 
ingmen of the native race, and what then? What could have 


8o 


Immigration. 

been done formerly, only after a century or two of warfare, has 
been accomplished quietly; even the prosperity of which we 
boast, may not be interfered with. These people of other races 
may do well, may make the country blossom as a rose. It is 
in the country to blossom and the bloom may be produced by 
one race as soon as by another. The country will take care 
of itself and those that possess it; but there is something in¬ 
volved in the possession of it. Withal it would be due to 
mourn for a departed race, but we may well waive feeling and 
sentiment; if humanity has suffered no loss, sentiment is not 
much of a matter. If the native race was superseded by kin¬ 
dred people from across the sea these efforts would not be 
counted worth the while, or even by another race with the 
.same civilization, but this is not so. The world is changed by 
the change and its future is affected by it. The earth’s prob¬ 
lem is its seething, struggling mass of corrupt humanity. Its 
expansion is no gain, the expansion of right principles alone is 
gain. For better or worse, the Anglo-Saxon race has become 
custodian of principles, which, however imperfectly applied, 
is all the world has to show for its struggles so far; as the race 
goes down, so they go down with it. Prosperity and power 
may be a blessing or a curse, according to the hands it falls 
into. The question is, what race, civilization and principles 
are to be advanced and strengthened by the mighty forces of 
this country? We are deliriously excited about its prosperity, 
as we are developing it to turn it over into the hands of alien 
races, a different view could be taken. It is counted policy 
and courage in a captain to blow up the ship rather than allow 
it to fall into the hands of an enemy. When Napoleon ad¬ 
vanced into Russia, the people turned the country into a wilder¬ 
ness, and by so doing saved it to their own race. In more 
than one sense it is true that “he that would save his life shall 
lose it.” Eagerly welcoming and proudfully boasting of life 
of the meanest sort, we forfeit a noble life everlasting for our 
race in this country. 

3. Let us tabulate for better understanding the three man¬ 
ifestations of revolutionary forces in modern civilization, of 
which scientists, philosophers and statesmen have, so far, 
taken no account. 

t. The disintegrating forces of civilization which, aided by 


Immigration. 


81 


modern means of communication, circulation and advertising, 
may destroy a civilized people in a short time. 

2. The expanding force of primitive people which, freed 
from the ancient scourges of war, pestilence and famine, will 
produce a Genghis Khan eruption of people every year, such 
as, formerly, took place only once or twice in a century. 

3. The representatives of the genius and resources of civili¬ 
zation, the servants, purveyors and promoters of alien races. 

We have these new manifestations, and have put nothing 
new in operation, with which to meet them. 

Some sixty years ago an idea fastened itself on civilized na¬ 
tions; that of education, as a “cure-all” for every ill. But, 
education', as we have it, so far from being a cure, has proved 
a necessary condition for the disintegrating forces, without 
which, and beyond which, they have not spread. 

Americans have, for sixty years, fought a losing battle with 
education as a basis, and are yet confident they are going to 
fool somebody, with their schools and libraries; but the other 
party understands very well what is up, being quite sure, if 
we are not, that it is a continent that is being played for, and 
have no intention of being fooled. 

Americans, seeing their own race displaced, are eyeing their 
successors, the swarthy children from southern and central 
Europe, with no stepmotherly interest. They are, so to speak, 
taking them to their bosom. Even their unpronounceable 
names and strange books do not appall them. They have the 
impulse toward them of a disappointed woman for the off¬ 
spring of others. Their schemes, in their behalf, are not in¬ 
deed wholly disinterested; the idea is that they will take up 
with their teaching and example. They succeeded with one 
alien race, the Negro. But then the Negroes were orphans; 
they had no authority of their own, no tradition, no ideal. 
It is entirely different with these newcomers; they are not 
orphans, and designs upon them are not only what may be 
called “bad taste,” but are presumably doomed to failure. 
They pity and resent interference, being fully provided with 
everything of their own, which they are fully persuaded is 
far superior to anything that can be offered them. They have 
their mother—the church; their father—the pope; their 
teachers and guardians—the priests. They have their organi¬ 
zation; their distinct ideals; their plans and purposes; their 


82 


Immigration. 


ambition, which is world-wide and includes the United States^ 
They have come to conquer, not do be conquered. 

Americans have schools, missions and settlements, and are 
confident they can empty the ocean with their water-bucket. 
The calculation runs as follows: 

These people of alien races will go to school, will learn Eng¬ 
lish ; will acquire knowledge; will become Americans. Ameri¬ 
cans believed, of themselves, that all they needed, to be saved, 
was to build schools, and stuff themselves chock-full of book¬ 
learning; but it only made matters worse, the more they were 
educated the faster they died. The controling influence, in 
our alien population, will save them from this; but not to lose 
them again, as fondly imagined. A little knowledge or polish 
will not spoil these people for faithfulness to their race and 
their ideals. Languages and knowledge are not a monopoly of 
the Anglo-Saxon race; rightly applied, they are weapons, 
which one may use in behalf of his own, as much as another. 
It is fair to presume they will be thus used. Eagerness to avail 
themselves of advantages is reasonable, when furnished to 
them, free of cost. Our friends err in thinking the game is to 
be played into their hands. The priests, who control our alien 
population, are not easily fooled; they are old campaigners and 
understand the game. They have the means of keeping their 
people together—the strongest organization the world ever 
saw. If they do not sequester the children in parochial schools, 
they take good care to keep their influence over them. They 
have no doubt there is a difference, and do not think lightly 
of the issue. They will put up a bigger fight for a family, or 
a single child, than the Americans for their whole country. 
Where Americans have failed and been fooled on every point, 
they have been wise and guarded every point. They have 
gained on the population steadily, at an ever-increasing rate. 
But our friends are right in saying that these people, of alien 
races, will become Americans. They will become the Ameri¬ 
cans. And America is a large asset; they will, no doubt, ap¬ 
preciate it, and be proud of it. They will go further than we 
in some respects. We are turning over the country with a good 
degree of grace; but these will fight for its possession, tooth 
and nail. There will always be plenty of Americans in Ameri¬ 
ca. The question: Who are to be the future Americans, is the 
whole issue. If we are content to surrender this, there is no 


Immigration. 83 * 

more anything to argue about; we have surrendered our race 
and country, and there is nothing left for a dispute. 

4. When all has been said on this subject, it is still a ques¬ 
tion whether there is integrity and strength enough left in the 
race to save it; no matter Jiow the situation be realized. It has 
been shown that our race is, physically, hardly fit to survive; 
it may come to be questioned whether it is, in any sense, fit to* 
survive. Restriction of immigration is necessary to give it a 
chance, but, even then, it would not survive, if it is wholly 
without strength and integrity. We have a general condi¬ 
tion, as has been described, and the leading forces of our 
civilization and representative people are persistently work¬ 
ing to produce and continue it. Churches and church people- 
have led the procession downward from the start and wish to 
be consistent: science has nothing to say on the subject; 
newspapers scatter the seed of death and destruction for a 
small consideration; capitalists annihilate their race by whole¬ 
sale displacement of it for an alien population ; politicians will 
do as much for place and preferment. One and all are actively 
at work destroying the remaining strength of their race; all 
that stands between the miserably weak remnant they leave here 
and the fury of past and present fanaticism. Final defeat can 
not be averted with supreme selfishness everywhere. Perhaps 
we shall know “the day of our visitation/' or, perhaps, we 
shall not; no prophet is needed to tell us we are nearing our 
last chance. 

In one of our Western cities, not long ago, a count was 
taken of the respective worshipers, in Catholic and Protestant 
churches. It was something like two hundred and twenty-five- 
thousand and fifty-five thousand respectively, the latter 
counted twice, and a majority of them foreigners, but of our 
race from abroad. The proportion is typical of our cities in 
the North. Some are worried because they imagine the 
strangers are congested in the cities; but they are spreading 
in the country as well; their rate of increase will force them 
rapidly in all directions. Americans are drifting swiftly into 
the hands of the old adversary, from whom their fathers fled to 
America. He has followed and is overtaking them. They feel 
the need of being friendly; they are looking up into his face 
wistfully, and asking if he will be good to them. Yes, he will 


8 4 


Immigration . 


be good. They are patting the ecclesiastic tiger on the head 
and calling him pretty names; it is sport while the chain of an 
adverse majority holds. It is well to indulge in fine feelings, 
universal brotherhood, boundless liberality, while it is left for 
us to be condescending and on the giving hand. When we 
become the dependents, it assumes a different aspect. Doubt¬ 
less, even an autocrat may be generous, but it does not follow 
it will be a good thing to be dependent on his mercy and 
generosity; it may not amount to much when it comes to the 
test. 

The question in this country is, the possession of the country. 
Not in any figurative sense, as when we say of a millionaire or 
boss, that he owns the country; but in a sense entirely literal, 
more literal than if a war raged about it. No ordinary war, 
that the country could engage in would involve the life of 
a race and civilization. Yet, in such a case, even we would 
lay aside our partisan squabbles and attend to the one ques¬ 
tion of saving the country. While we are attending to the 
tariff, the other party attends to the main issue, with time to 
spare to help keep us interested in our wrangle. And we are 
pleased at their zeal for “Americanism,” which, after a fashion, 
is genuine enough; they are in earnest about America; and 
unless Americans were easily fooled, they would not have 
nearly lost, the country. 

What is lost can not be regained, it is barely a question of 
checking the process and saving what remains, if a weakened 
race is capable of an effort. Fifty years ago a few simple 
measures would have saved the whole country to the Anglo- 
Saxon race; twenty-five years ago much could have been done, 
with little difficulty; now it will take determined efforts, on the 
part of all that is left of the Anglo-Saxons to save what they 
still retain. We may drift till things begin to topple; there will 
be squirming then, no doubt. There will be a few years of 
desperation and vain struggle; after that—what? 

It is not, mainly, a question of racial or national pride or 
sentiment, nor of ugly comparisons between nationalities. It 
is a question of principles and the future of humanity. A 
question of the conflict that has ben eminent in the world since 
man was placed upon the earth; the conflict between the idea 
of man’s right to himself, and the right of the autocrat to all 
men. Thousands of years of blood and misery culminated 


Immigration. 


*5 


some three hundred years ago in a long and fearful struggle. 
Since then the contending forces have rested on their arms. 
A balance, between them, was established, which will be over¬ 
thrown, if the United States is won by the autocrat. Many 
of our race affect to think lightly of what was thus gained, 
after centuries of struggle and incalculable suffering. But 
there is no reason to believe they are in any way fitted to fight 
the battle over again, should it become necessary. 

And it is too soon to take for granted that it may not. The 
autocratic king or priest rules over nine-tenths of mankind; it 
is not a matter of small significance that the latter has gained 
a large share of the United States, with good prospects of 
winning it all. Of the two, the rule of the latter is, by far, 
the more oppressive and dangerous, hopeless and degrading, 
so much so, that the adherents have had to curb it, where it is 
general; but wherever this is done, there is a standing quarrel 
with the autocrat and his agents, who never cease to strive and 
plot for absolute mastery. They must be true to themselves, 
their system and principles. Here it is still a campaign for 
possession, which unifies, solidifies and intensifies the zeal and 
devotion of the people for their leaders and their'cause. This 
devotion and zeal can be counted on till the opposition is 
disposed of. 

A long evolution is ahead of us before the Catholics 
of the United States become the Liberals of France or 
Italy. In the home lands, political jars deflect their zeal; 
in the United States, the presence of Protestants stimulate it. 
Fire, faithfulness and enthusiasm will be maintained during 
the campaign for conquest. After that, the priests will rule 
for from fifty to one hundred years. By that time we may 
look for a reaction; there will be a poets’ party and a 
liberal party. The power of the church may then be some¬ 
what restricted, as in most Catholic countries, where it was 
done, not because the church burned heretics, but because 
she burned Catholics when she was through with the heretics. 
As is evident from the failure.of the Protestant propaganda 
among them, the Liberals are everywhere good Catholics; 
they do not do anything for the sake of those not of the 
faith—if the occasion affords them shelter, it is grudgingly 
allowed; nor for liberty as a principle, but solely for the sake 
of their own safety. They are in terror of the church, and, 


86 immigration. 

\ 

as in France, doing desperate things to secure themselves. 
They have not forgotten the lessons of the past which the 
Protestants will have to learn over again; and are placing 
themselves in a position for it. The church, through her 
fifteen hundred years, should be supposed to have afforded ex¬ 
perience enough to be remembered, but if not, more may 
be deserved. 

Nevertheless, Americans are confident that the agents of 
the autocrat in this country are liberal, and they are doubtless 
that and whatever else helps to promote their interests. There 
is little bungling in their camp. It is policy to allay suspicion, 
to lay low, to minimize their numbers and gain. Had the 
Anglo-Saxons twenty-five millions in South America, rapidly 
gaining on the natives, we would be told of it every day. 
These people are not in the show-business, they are conducting 
a campaign. Americans are comforted while allowed to run 
the government and keep their money. This is not at present 
the concern; it is the population and physical strength of the 
country that the struggle is for; the rest is easy. There will be 
no move, unless the issue is forced, till success is easy and 
certain; their position materially strengthened every day and 
hour, they will not take risk of hasty action. Their policy 
is not to take the country piecemeal; this is a blunder which 
has been carefully avoided. Had they set up their regime in 
a part of the country contradictory to the rest, it would have 
met with opposition and failure ; they have their forces dis¬ 
tributed all over the country, and are moving on every point. 

It is asked: “Where is the realization of danger anticipated 
from immigration?” So far, nothing has happened, save a 
substitution of races. This has taken place to an extent 
greater than anticipated in the most extravagant prediction. 
The native race in the North has been wrecked, other races 
have taken its place and the process is under way in the South; 
a loss of the country by one race and gain of it by others. 
Perhaps this is the essential of what was anticipated in the 
way of danger. It is not appreciated by those to whom race 
and country are mere means for raking together an amount 
of money. With them the question of danger is strictly per¬ 
sonal—danger to themselves and their position; or changes 
in the form and administration of government, implying such. 
This is a contingency that does not worry the other parties; 


Immigration. 


87 


with them the essential is the population, the possession of 
the country by their people. Danger of this began with the 
beginning of alien immigration, and has increased with its 
increase. When we have the evidence of danger that is asked 
for, it will be too late to guard against it. The evidence of 
danger asked for is final and complete overthrow; even at 
the present rate, we shall have to wait for this a few years. 

And what will this final overthrow mean? Whatever it 
may mean, it will mean the church triumphant. If we have 
a successful socialistic movement in this country; it will be 
headed by the church—not till the time of transition, for it 
would interfere with her plans, nor is the church a leader of 
forlorn hopes. In this movement the fanaticism of class differ¬ 
ences will be joined with the fanaticism of creed. The church 
is not adverse to any movement that she is allowed to control. 
Nor is she adverse to the idea of gaining credit for progressive¬ 
ness, if she can do it without sacrificing her principles. Her 
principles are herself and her power ; it is all there is to them. 
Such a movement might take any one of many shapes; the 
church either in the foreground or background of it. The 
fact that the masses are mostly Catholic and poor, and the 
capitalists mostly Protestants, would incline her towards it. 
She will not risk her popularity with the vast multitude of 
Catholics on account of any mere technicality—there is nothing 
suicidal about the church—nor because she is particular in 
what way the heretics are got away with. Much may be sur¬ 
mised with regard to the time of transition we are headed 
for; with the church, it is a mere question of detail. The 
Catholics in this country are unanimous in their enthusiastic 
devotion; it will not tax the ingenuity of the church to keep 
on top of any movement. With or without any movement, 
the church will work out her own distinct purpose, her 
authority and interests always sufficient warrant for any act. 

5. Perhaps the nearest parallel to our immigration are 
those mighty migrations, which, in the early centuries, swept 
from the north down over southern Europe and Asia. But 
in numbers, in movement and displacement of people there 
is, after all, scarcely any comparison. All the people involved 
in these migrations through a century or two would scarcely 
aggregate the half or whole million which we receive every 


88 


Immigration. 


year and continuing. They came from the sparsely peopled 
regions of the north; they gained their way by their hardi¬ 
hood, and were swallowed up among the multitudes, in the 
countries they invaded. Our southern migrations northward 
gain their way by the impact of immense numbers, bringing 
each year enough to repeople a State, as the native race melts 
away before them. 

With the claim of priority on the part of the native Ameri¬ 
can and Anglo-Saxon race in this country, they should not 
have allowed themselves to be pushed aside and out. The 
Anglo-Saxons settled this country, subdued the wilderness, 
and held undisputed sway for two hundred years. It would 
not have been wrong had they defended their possession by 
all the means in their power. Had they kept all they had, 
they would have had no particular reason for boasting; it 
would have been only their rightful share in the division of 
the two continents. The other races have all of South and 
Central America, Mexico, the Islands and half of Canada. 
A just and safe balance between the races demanded that 
they should have kept all of the United States. In the divine 
providence and by the energy of the race, it had been taken 
possession of. Displacement to any extent is so much ground 
and territory lost, and that by the only genuine kind of con¬ 
quest settling and peopling the country by their own kin. 
Had our race stood its ground, held its ground, and insisted 
on keeping the destinies of the country firmly in its own 
hands by controling and regulating immigration in favor of 
itself and its civilization, it would have done what its right 
not only allowed, but demanded. It has allowed itself to 
be overrun and overridden till there is left to the Anglo-Saxons 
a bare majority, which is being rapidly reduced, and we are 
drifting toward the point where the balance will turn against 
them; then not only half the country is lost to them, but the 
whole country is irretrievably lost to their race. The Anglo- 
Saxons will hardly wish to stay here as a minority ;* nor will 
they be wanted to; inducements will be offered sufficient to 
cause them to depart; what is done now with shamefacedness 
and some misgivings will be done with determination and 
dispatch. They will not endure what their forefathers did 
for the sake of existence; if the battle goes against them, they 
will lay down and die, like a wounded, discouraged animal. 


L.ofO. 


Immigration. 


89 


Of the two revolutionary forces in modern civilization, 
that of rapid decrease is not so impressive as that of swift 
increase. This insures that races which have neglected or 
forfeited their chances will never have them back again. 
Although the race of early Americans die, not again will 
the country return to a solitary, inoffensive wilderness to 
afford opportunities for new experiments along the lines of 
better principles. Out of the darkness of the middle ages 
and the past, myriads will come, born without restraint; bring¬ 
ing with them the institutions and aspirations of the past, here 
to find new life, new growth, new opportunties and new hopes; 
exulting in prospects of new triumphs, as in no other country; 
the prospect of a solid, priest-ruled population from Hudson 
Bay to Cape Horn, able again to raise the standards that were 
lowered by the fathers of a race, which is losing to the world 
and itself what was gained by centuries of heroic effort. 

It would be no exaggeration to say that a race of people 
never before lost so much in so short a time—perhaps never 
had so much to lose ; and it is equally true that a race of peo¬ 
ple never before acted so helplessly. Like so many wooden 
idols, our representatives have stood around, while their race 
has been annihilated, a continent slipping from its grasp. Yet, 
there has been the consciousness of what is going on. We 
have had outbursts of temper, spiteful words and broken 
heads, where we should have plans and actions commensurate 
with the life and death struggle of a race, the fight for a conti¬ 
nent. Even now we have measures discussed—abortive, even 
if put in operation; and plans—carefully aimed at friend and 
foe alike, so as not to hurt the feelings of any one. Afraid 
to tackle the main proposition, we indulge in weak skirmishing 
around the edges, so as not to seem to have wholly surrendered. 
We are picking some at the Jews and Mormons, for they are 
weak, and do not show their teeth. 

Barring polygamy, Mormonism is only dangerous as far 
as it is an imitation of Catholicism; autocratic central au¬ 
thority, to be obeyed without reference to personal conscience 
and private judgment. If we are not afraid of the three hun¬ 
dred millions, we should not fear the three hundred thousand. 
There is not much ground for pro-Jewish sentiment, from a 
national point of view. Jews hardly ever become anything 
but Jews. But we have gone too far to be particular about 


9 o 


Immigration. 


mere disadvantages; it is a question of positive dangers, and 
the Jews are not one. They are, of necessity, friends of civil 
and religious liberty; their numbers are limited. Had we 
the whole Jewish population of the world here, it would 
only be a fair offset to races and nationalities that are a danger 
and whose numbers are not limited. The Anglo-Saxons 
may as well make up their minds to tackle some one of their 
own size, if they wish to save their race and civilization. 

Mere blustering will avail nothing. It is useless to call upon 
a race of people, already cowered and beaten, to assert itself 
under ever-increasing pressure. We might as well expect the 
scattered remnants of an army, already defeated and demoral¬ 
ized, to regain its position, in the face of ever-increasing and 
overwhelming numbers. In a contest, nearly even, from a 
half to a whole million reinforcements, once for all, might 
determine the result. Had the native race all its original 
strength and vigor, and twice its present numbers, it would 
be equally certain to go down before a continuance of the 
present immigration. 

The country is now dependent on the South for physical 
strength to overrule the alien population of the North. But 
when the double-headed cyclone shall strike the South, with 
full force, disintegration from within, and immigration from 
without, the native race will be mowed down there as rapidly 
as it has been in the North. 

Given time, a race in a bad way may right itself. Immigra¬ 
tion sweeps it off the ground without any remedy or further 
chance. 

Already it is no uncommon thing to hear the frank avowal 
on the part of men of our race that they will not marry, will 
not rear children, unless this immigration is stopped. It is 
uselss to blame this to cowardice. Even the animals will not 
nest or rear their young, unless they have reasonable assurance 
of security. The time is past when mere scolding will answer; 
the time of strength and opportunities undisputed. The 
American way of depending on bravado and bluff does not 
count in the struggle; nothing but painstaking upbuilding of 
strength and skillful use of advantages will count. Even while 
bragging and bluffing they shrink from the contest, and are 
constantly falling back. Nor is it to be supposed that when 
a race of people reaches the reflective age, natural impulses will 


immigration. 


9* 

altogether rule and heavy responsibilities be incurred without 
the least regard to future prospects. To insure the continuance 
of such a race, the leading and governing forces will have to 
devise means that will make life possible and desirable. It has 
been cowardice, selfishness, crime, neglect, individually and 
collectively; reasons have been produced where there were 
none. It was inevitable that the time of imminent danger 
should come, as we have all along been moving in that di¬ 
rection. No one with nerve and steadiness enough to look 
at the situation can fail to be impressed with its meaning— 
these innumerable armies of semi-civilized people from 
southern and central Europe, their steady tramp as they march 
through the country, swooping down upon every means of 
a livelihood in multitude and conquering power beyond 
any thing ever before witnessed in the world, and only to be 
likened with what is pictured in certain visions in the book 
of Revelation. 

The question, how long a few millionaires can keep on top 
of an alien population, and color a pretension, is not of sufficient 
value to be worth considering. The operations of the capital¬ 
ists of the North, as of the slaveholders of the South, has been 
treason against their race and country; for a small considera¬ 
tion to themselves they have sacrificed both the one and the 
other ; what becomes of them is of no consequence. It is not 
worth the while to bolster up a pretension; the sooner it dis¬ 
appears the better. When alien races are in practical posses¬ 
sion of the country, its problems and destinies should be left 
to them ungrudgingly; we have forfeited our right to protest 
or complain, and meddlesomeness is in bad taste. If we are 
not content to contemplate this, then we should go to> work 
to build up again an Anglo-Saxon population. Do it openly, 
earnestly, systematically. Doubtless, it is serious for a weak¬ 
ened race to take up a life and death struggle for existence, 
when by timely ancl rational precautions it might have held 
the whole country without a struggle; but it is that now, or 
getting off the continent. The race has barely a fighting 
chance; when the balance turns against it, it will not have that 
^or any other kind of a chance. Immigration of aliens would 
have to be stopped—the educational test would have done 
some good sixty years ago, but it is not now a question of 
a few thousand more or less. We should have to consider 


92 


Immigration. 


carefully what we can save of the wreckage; where we can 
stop disintegration; what help we can get from Anglo-Saxon 
countries abroad. It might not be great numbers under any 
circumstances, but it would amount to something if those who 
came were not choked down or driven back by a competition 
against which they are as helpless as the native Americans. 
It will not do to say that the aliens are doing work the people 
of our own race will not do; ninety-seven per cent, of these are 
accustomed to and dependent on hard work of manual labor 
for a living. If the chance for this is closed against them, they 
have no means of a start; they can not start as bankers and 
merchants, nor do we want a nation of such. If the people 
in Europe that are kindred to us have no outlet, they will 
probably learn to do what Americans have done—destroy 
themselves. We should save this country for them, and offer 
them every inducement to come. The other races have all 
the rest of America, with an area several times that of the 
United States. Even if it were a question simply to have our 
race represented, a few honest working-people are more satis¬ 
factory than the millionaires; but if our race is to hold the 
country it must occupy the ground of physical force and num¬ 
bers. 

It is useless now to speak of the native American race in 
the North—to save the country for it. Fifty years of disinte¬ 
gration have left so few that in many States there are not 
enough for a respectable factor in the population. Nearly 
swamped by the first Celtic invasion, help was afforded 
by a considerable Anglo-Saxon immigration in the years suc¬ 
ceeding the war ; these are still a principal dependence, and 
fairly held the balance, till southern Europe opened her flood¬ 
gates, and poured out those innumerable swarms which have 
overrun the country. Even if this immigration is stopped, 
considering the condition of our Anglo-Saxon population, 
and the greater increase of the aliens already here, these would 
probably in time gain the ascendency unless we receive help 
from the Anglo-Saxon countries in Europe. The Anglo- 
Saxon countries in Europe where Anglo-Saxon civilization 
prevails are: Scandinavia, Finland, Scotland, England, north 
Germany and a few contingents elsewhere; their strictness and 
integrity as such in the order named. 

There is the difficulty of a weakened race making a strong 
effort against a strong opposition. Its tendency is to struggle 


Immigration. 


93 


—not to better itself, but to keep up appearances, and—drift. 
The difficulty of such an effort contradictory to past tradi¬ 
tions and past policy, in view of other nations. That this is a 
difficulty in- appearance rather than in fact makes it nothing 
the less real to those possessed by these traditional notions. 
Representatives of other nations, not thus hampered, have no 
difficulty in appreciating the situation. They have their own 
thoughts about it. While we are shutting our eyes to what 
is going on, they have theirs wide open. They have not our 
reasons; to them the spectacle is the most amazing and in¬ 
teresting ever witnessed in the world—a mighty country falling 
into the hands of their people without striking a blow. Certain 
south European nations have become almost silly in their 
show of friendship for the United States; they may well be 
anxious that the present process be not disturbed. The na¬ 
tions of Europe would not be shocked in the way we suppose, 
if we should plainly announce it our intention to save the 
country for our own race and civilization, and adopt a policy 
with this end in view; they know that in our place they would 
not have waited till half the country was alienated. Never¬ 
theless, such an announcement would have a certain effect upon 
them; they would not see their schemes frustrated without 
a protest; there would be attempts at bluffing, no doubt. But 
unless we are prepared to show the spirit and determination 
of actual warfare, we are not up to the situation; we have 
indulged in war preparations, and actual fighting, where in¬ 
finitely less was at stake. We are, to the end of it, involved 
in this conflict, with all its consequences, whether we choose to 
make a stand or to continue our retreat. 

When it is understood that the native race of a country is 
more easily and effectively destroyed, and its civilization sub¬ 
verted, by the invasion of an unrestricted and unlimited immi¬ 
gration than by armed conflict, the right of self-defense 
against it will be recognized. The people of a country can 
have no better ground on which to put up a fight than that 
of its race and civilzation; if it should not count this suffi¬ 
cient reason it would be void of self-respect. Nor could it 
for a moment tolerate interference from other nations while 
contending on this ground; we can not consult other nations 
on a plain question of self-preservation. 

(THE end.) 























NOV 21 1904 





































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